ua nt - p h / 00 11 08 3 v 2 3 J ul 2 00 1 Teleportation : from probability distributions to quantum states

The role of the off-diagonal density matrix elements of the entangled pair is investigated in quantum teleportation of a qubit. The dependence between them and the off-diagonal elements of the teleported density matrix is shown to be linear. In this way the ideal quantum teleportation is related to an entirely classical communication protocol: the one-time pad cypher. The latter can be regarded as the classical counterpart of Bennett’s quantum teleportation scheme. The quantum-to-classical transition is demonstrated on the statistics of a gedankenexperiment. PACS Nubmers: 03.67.Hk, 03.65.Bz