Search for: All records

We develop a protocol for entanglement generation in the quantum internet that allows a repeater node to usen-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) projective measurements that can fusensuccessfully entangledlinks, i.e., two-qubit entangled Bell pairs shared acrossnnetwork edges, incident at that node. Implementingn-fusion, forn ≥ 3, is in principle not much harder than 2-fusions (Bell-basis measurements) in solid-state qubit memories. If we allow even 3-fusions at the nodes, we find—by developing a connection to a modified version of the site-bond percolation problem—that despite lossy (hence probabilistic) link-level entanglement generation, and probabilistic success of the fusion measurements at nodes, one can generate entanglement between end parties Alice and Bob at a rate that stays constant as the distance between them increases. We prove that this powerful network property is not possible to attain with any quantum networking protocol built with Bell measurements and multiplexing alone. We also design a two-party quantum key distribution protocol that converts the entangled states shared between two nodes into a shared secret, at a key generation rate that is independent of the distance between the two parties.

 

We study a quantum entanglement distribution switch serving a set of users in a star topology with equal-length links. The quantum switch, much like a quantum repeater, can perform entanglement swapping to extend entanglement across longer distances. Additionally, the switch is equipped with entanglement switching logic, enabling it to implement switching policies to better serve the needs of the network. In this work, the function of the switch is to create bipartite or tripartite entangled states among users at the highest possible rates at a fixed ratio. Using Markov chains, we model a set of randomized switching policies. Discovering that some are better than others, we present analytical results for the case where the switch stores one qubit per user, and find that the best policies outperform a time division multiplexing policy for sharing the switch between bipartite and tripartite state generation. This performance improvement decreases as the number of users grows. The model is easily augmented to study the capacity region in the presence of quantum state decoherence and associated cut-off times for qubit storage, obtaining similar results. Moreover, decoherence-associated quantum storage cut-off times appear to have little effect on capacity in our identical-link system. We also study a smaller class of policies when the switch stores two qubits per user. 

Recent technological advancements in satellite based quantum communication has made it a promising technology for realizing global scale quantum networks. Due to better loss distance scaling compared to ground based fiber communication, satellite quantum communication can distribute high quality quantum entanglements among ground stations that are geographically separated at very long distances. This work focuses on optimal distribution of bipartite entanglements to a set of pair of ground stations using a constellation of orbiting satellites. In particular, we characterize the optimal satellite-to-ground station transmission scheduling policy with respect to the aggregate entanglement distribution rate subject to various resource constraints at the satellites and ground stations. We cast the optimal transmission scheduling problem as an integer linear programming problem and solve it efficiently for some specific scenarios. Our framework can also be used as a benchmark tool to measure the performance of other potential transmission scheduling policies. 

We study a quantum switch that creates shared end-to-end entangled quantum states to multiple sets of users that are connected to it. Each user is connected to the switch via an optical link across which bipartite Bell-state entangled states are generated in each time-slot with certain probabilities, and the switch merges entanglements of links to create end-to-end entanglements for users. One qubit of an entanglement of a link is stored at the switch and the other qubit of the entanglement is stored at the user corresponding to the link. Assuming that qubits of entanglements of links decipher after one time-slot, we characterize the capacity region, which is defined as the set of arrival rates of requests for end-to-end entanglements for which there exists a scheduling policy that stabilizes the switch. We propose a Max-Weight scheduling policy and show that it stabilizes the switch for all arrival rates that lie in the capacity region. We also provide numerical results to support our analysis. 

In a quantum network that successfully creates links—shared Bell states between neighboring repeater nodes—with probability p in each time slot, and performs Bell State Measurements at nodes with success probability q < 1, the end-to-end entanglement generation rate drops exponentially with the distance between consumers, despite multi-path routing. If repeaters can perform multi-qubit projective measurements in the GHZ basis that succeed with probability q, the rate does not change with distance in a certain (p,q) region, but decays exponentially outside. This region where the distance-independent rate occurs is the super-critical region of a new percolation problem. We extend this GHZ protocol to incorporate a time-multiplexing blocklength k, the number of time slots over which a repeater can mix-and-match successful links to perform fusion on. As k increases, the super-critical region expands. For a given (p,q), the entanglement rate initially increases with k, and once inside the super-critical region for a high enough k, it decays as 1/k GHZ states per time slot. When memory coherence time exponentially distributed with mean μ is incorporated, it is seen that increasing k does not indefinitely increase the super-critical region; it has a hard μ-dependent limit. Finally, we find that incorporating space-division multiplexing, i.e., running the above protocol independently in up to d disconnected network regions, where d is the network’s node degree, one can go beyond the 1 GHZ state per time slot rate that the above randomized local-link-state protocol cannot surpass. As (p,q) increases, one can approach the ultimate min-cut entanglement-generation capacity of d GHZ states per slot. 

Quantum networks are complex systems formed by the interaction among quantum processors through quantum channels. Analogous to classical computer networks, quantum networks allow for the distribution of quantum computation among quantum computers. In this work, we describe a quantum walk protocol to perform distributed quantum computing in a quantum network. The protocol uses a quantum walk as a quantum control signal to perform distributed quantum operations. We consider a generalization of the discrete-time coined quantum walk model that accounts for the interaction between a quantum walker system in the network graph with quantum registers inside the network nodes. The protocol logically captures distributed quantum computing, abstracting hardware implementation and the transmission of quantum information through channels. Control signal transmission is mapped to the propagation of the walker system across the network, while interactions between the control layer and the quantum registers are embedded into the application of coin operators. We demonstrate how to use the quantum walker system to perform a distributed CNOT operation, which shows the universality of the protocol for distributed quantum computing. Furthermore, we apply the protocol to the task of entanglement distribution in a quantum network.