
Demonstrating proton‑based quantum teleportation would expand quantum information science beyond photons, enabling new hadronic quantum technologies and testing fundamental entanglement in nuclear matter.
Quantum‑state teleportation has long been the domain of photonic platforms, where entangled photon pairs are routinely generated and manipulated. Extending this capability to massive particles such as protons challenges conventional wisdom, because nuclear interactions are short‑range and spin‑dependent. The recent work by Witala et al. bridges that gap by showing that unpolarized proton‑proton collisions can naturally produce maximally entangled Bell states, a prerequisite for any teleportation protocol. This shift from light to hadronic matter opens a new experimental frontier for testing quantum mechanics in regimes where strong forces dominate.
The authors employed the realistic AV18 nucleon‑nucleon potential to compute scattering amplitudes across a range of laboratory energies. Their analysis revealed that at center‑of‑mass angles near 90°, the transition matrix simplifies to a single dominant coefficient, effectively projecting the outgoing proton pair onto a pure |ψ⁻⟩ Bell state. Similar selectivity appears in quasi‑free deuteron‑breakup configurations, where the proton‑proton subsystem inherits the same entanglement structure. By mapping the energy dependence of these coefficients, the study identifies narrow windows—around a few MeV to tens of MeV—where experimentalists can maximize entanglement yield.
Practically, the proposed scheme relies on detecting three coincident nucleons, a task made tractable by the high event rates of unpolarized beams compared with polarized alternatives. Successful implementation would provide the first demonstration of quantum teleportation in a three‑proton system, paving the way for nuclear‑scale quantum communication channels and novel sensors that exploit entangled hadrons. Future research may explore alternative NN potentials, different target materials, and integration with emerging quantum‑control technologies, positioning hadronic quantum information as a complementary pillar to photonic and solid‑state platforms.
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