Bidirectional state transfer between superconducting and microwave-photon qubits by single reflection

The number of superconducting qubits contained in a single quantum processor is increasing steadily. However, to realize a truly useful quantum computer, it is inevitable to increase the number of qubits much further by distributing quantum information among distant processors using flying qubits. A key element towards this goal is a deterministic quantum interaction between superconducting-atom and propagating microwave-photon qubits. Here, we confirm the bidirectional state transfer between them, which completes by simply reflecting the photon at the atom. The averaged fidelity of the photon-to-atom (atom-to-photon) state transfer reaches 0.826 (0.801), limited mainly by the lifetime of the atom qubit. The present technology would be useful for future distributed quantum computation with superconducting qubits.