We study a quantum repeater which is based on decoherence free quantum gates recently proposed by Klein {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. A, {\bf 73}, 012332 (2006)]. A number of operations on the decoherence free subspace in this scheme makes use of an ancilla qubit, which undergoes dephasing and thus introduces decoherence to the system. We examine how this decoherence affects entanglement swapping and purification as well as the performance of a quantum repeater. We compare the decoherence free quantum repeater with a quantum repeater based on qubits that are subject to decoherence and show that it outperforms the latter when decoherence due to long waiting times of conventional qubits becomes significant. Thus, a quantum repeater based on decoherence free subspaces is a possibility to greatly improve quantum communication over long or even intercontinental distances.
We study a quantum repeater which is based on decoherence free quantum gates recently proposed by Klein {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. A, {\bf 73}, 012332 (2006)]. A number of operations on the decoherence free subspace in this scheme makes use of an ancilla qubit, which undergoes dephasing and thus introduces decoherence to the system. We examine how this decoherence affects entanglement swapping and purification as well as the performance of a quantum repeater. We compare the decoherence free quantum repeater with a quantum repeater based on qubits that are subject to decoherence and show that it outperforms the latter when decoherence due to long waiting times of conventional qubits becomes significant. Thus, a quantum repeater based on decoherence free subspaces is a possibility to greatly improve quantum communication over long or even intercontinental distances.
We discuss a long-distance quantum communication system based on entangled photon pairs, which apply entanglement as its fundamental resource. For distances longer than the coherence length of a counterpart noisy quantum channel, the fidelity of transmission is ordinarily so low that standard purification processes are not applicable. The quantum repeater stretches the length of the entangled photon pairs. And the high fidelity entanglement of photons between sender and receiver is obtained by entanglement purification and entanglement swapping. We compare the nested repeater with the common repeater and show that it outperforms the latter, which is built an EPR pair in less time.
We present a quantum repeater protocol for distributing entanglement over long distances, where a dedicated communication stage enables trial rates not limited by the travel time between repeater nodes. To accomplish this, each node contains several qubits that can couple to one single-photon emitter. Photons from the emitters in neighboring nodes generate heralded entanglement between qubits in these nodes. The protocol leaves the emitters disentangled from the rest of the system immediately after emitting the photons, thus allowing them to be reused to entangle other qubits without waiting for the repeater link round-trip time. This time multiplexing increases the protocol trial rate by up to an order of magnitude. The protocol is then combined with conventional deterministic entanglement swapping and heralded entanglement purification to extend the entanglement distance and reduce the entanglement error, respectively. We perform a complete protocol analysis by considering all relevant error sources, such as initialization, two-qubit gate, and qubit measurement errors, as well as the exponential decoherence of the qubits with time. The latter is particularly important since we analyze the protocol performance for a broad range of experimental parameters and obtain secret key rates ranging from 1 to 1000 Hz at a distance of 1000 km. Our results suggest that it is important to reach a qubit memory coherence time of around 1 s, and two-qubit gate and measurement errors on the order of 10 − 3 to obtain reasonable secret key rates over distances longer than achievable with direct transmission. While this work focuses on optimizing secret key rates, the protocol can also be used for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pair generation and is thus also relevant for, e.g., distributed quantum computing.
We study the use of entanglement purification for quantum communication over long distances. For distances much longer than the coherence length of a corresponding noisy quantum channel, the fidelity of transmission is usually so low that standard purification methods are not applicable. It is possible, however, to divide the channel into shorter segments that are purified separately and then connected by the method of entanglement swapping. This method can be much more efficient than schemes based on quantum error correction, as it makes explicit use of two-way classical communication. An important question is how the noise, introduced by imperfect local operations (that constitute the protocols of purification and the entanglement swapping), accumulates in such a compound channel, and how it can be kept below a certain noise level. To treat this problem, we first study the applicability and the efficiency of entanglement purification protocols in the situation of imperfect local operations. We then present a scheme that allows entanglement purification over arbitrary long channels and tolerates errors on the percent level. It requires a polynomial overhead in time, and an overhead in local resources that grows only logarithmically with the length of the channel.
We investigate the influence of memory errors in the quantum repeater scheme for long-range quantum communication. We show that the communication distance is limited in standard operation mode due to memory errors resulting from unavoidable waiting times for classical signals. We show how to overcome these limitations by (i) improving local memory and (ii) introducing two operational modes of the quantum repeater. In both operational modes, the repeater is run blindly, i.e., without waiting for classical signals to arrive. In the first scheme, entanglement purification protocols based on one-way classical communication are used allowing to communicate over arbitrary distances. However, the error thresholds for noise in local control operations are very stringent. The second scheme makes use of entanglement purification protocols with two-way classical communication and inherits the favorable error thresholds of the repeater run in standard mode. One can increase the possible communication distance by an order of magnitude with reasonable overhead in physical resources. We outline the architecture of a quantum repeater that can possibly ensure intercontinental quantum communication.
Over the last decade, the record distance for quantum communications remains in the range of 100 km due to losses and decoherence in the quantum channel. To achieve long distance, H.J. Briegel et al proposed a quantum repeater protocol, which combine quantum memory, entanglement purification and entanglement swapping [1]. Due to the lack of perfect quantum memory, the quantum repeater has not yet been implemented experimentally though much efforts have been made over many years. Here we present a solid-state repeater scheme using a quantum-dot spin in an optical microcavity [2,3]. This repeater has several advantages: (1) deterministic (if optimized); (2) complete and loss-resistant Bell-state analyzer with a built-in spin memory; (3) the storage time for spin memory could be significantly prolonged using proposed spin-echo techniques; (4) compatible with standard semiconductor processing techniques. [1] H. -J. Briegel et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5932 (1998). [2] C.Y. Hu et al, Phys. Rev. B, 78, 085307 (2008); 78, 125316 (2008); 80, 205326 (2009). [3] C.Y. Hu and J.G. Rarity, ArXiv: quant-ph 1005.5545 (2010). [4] S. Reitzenstein et al, Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 251109 (2007).
First-generation quantum repeaters are essential in distributing entanglement over long distances since they could mitigate losses in optical fiber. Repeaters split the total distance into shorter, easier to generate links. Then, entanglement swapping establishes long range entanglement by performing local measurements at the repeaters and heralding their results. In this work, we develop an analytical model that estimates the impact of decoherence during heralding for a given protocol. Furthermore, we identify a competition between two phenomena: as repeater count increases, so does entanglement generation, but the additive impact of memory decoherence on final entanglement rate increases too. Therefore, we find that an optimal number of repeaters exists. These findings could lead the design of future quantum networks, both in the inter-repeater distance and swapping timings.