Kilometer-Scale Ion-Photon Entanglement with a Metastable $^{88}$Sr$^{+}$ Qubit (2506.11257v1)

Abstract: We demonstrate entanglement between the polarization of an infrared photon and a metastable $^{88}$Sr$^+$ ion qubit. This entanglement persists after transmitting the photon over a $2.8:$km long commercial fiber deployed in an urban environment. Tomography of the ion-photon entangled state yields a fidelity of $0.949(4)$ within the laboratory and $0.929(5)$ after fiber transmission, not corrected for readout errors. Our results establish the Strontium ion as a promising candidate for metropolitan-scale quantum networking based on an atomic transition at $1092:$nm, a wavelength compatible with existing telecom fiber infrastructure.