An overview will be given of various approaches to implementing a quantum repeater for quantum communication over large distances. This includes a discussion of systems and protocols that are experimentally feasible and thus realizable in the midterm in order to go beyond the current limit of a few hundred km given by direct quantum-state transmissions. At the same time, these schemes should be, in principle, scalable to arbitrary distances. In this context, the influence of various elements and strategies in a quantum repeater protocol on the final fidelities and rates shall be addressed: initial entanglement distribution, Bell measurements, multiplexing, postselection, quantum memories, and quantum error detection/correction. Solely on the hardware side, the differences in using just single quanta or instead employing many quanta for the flying (photons) and the stationary (atoms) qubits will be pointed out.
An overview will be given of various approaches to implementing a quantum repeater for quantum communication over large distances. This includes a discussion of systems and protocols that are experimentally feasible and thus realizable in the midterm in order to go beyond the current limit of a few hundred km given by direct quantum-state transmissions. At the same time, these schemes should be, in principle, scalable to arbitrary distances. In this context, the influence of various elements and strategies in a quantum repeater protocol on the final fidelities and rates shall be addressed: initial entanglement distribution, Bell measurements, multiplexing, postselection, quantum memories, and quantum error detection/correction. Solely on the hardware side, the differences in using just single quanta or instead employing many quanta for the flying (photons) and the stationary (atoms) qubits will be pointed out.
This thesis is an exploration of quantum repeaters from a practical point of view. Quantum repeaters are devices which help improve the quantum communication capacity of a lossy bosonic channel (which include photonic channels such as optical fiber) beyond what is possible using a purely lossy channel. The analyses in this thesis involve modeling the experimental imperfections inherent in the various devices which comprise a quantum repeater, then combining these models to calculate various quantities of interest. \n \nTwo systems are analyzed in this thesis. One is a simple quantum repeater, while the other is a potential building block for more complex quantum repeaters. \n \nThe simple quantum repeater scheme can be implemented with currently available technology. In it, two parties perform quantum key distribution (QKD) by exchanging photons with two quantum memories placed between them. Its secret key rate ideally scales as the square root of the transmittivity of the optical channel, which is superior to QKD schemes based on direct transmission because key rates for the latter scale at best linearly with transmittivity. Taking into account imperfections in the setup, such as detector efficiency and dark counts, we present parameter regimes in which our protocol outperforms protocols based on direct transmission. We find that implementing our scheme with trapped ions is a promising way to reach the necessary parameter regimes, and that the regimes are easier to reach if the optical channels are very lossy. \n \nThe creation of entanglement between two quantum memories is an important building block in some quantum repeater schemes. We consider a specific quantum memory consisting of an atom trapped in a cavity. The system allows a CNOT operation to be performed between an atom and a photon. We study three methods for taking advantage of this to entangle two atoms: (1) interacting a coherent pulse with each atom, then performing an entangling measurement on the pulses; (2) interacting a single coherent pulse with each atom sequentially; (3) emitting an entangled photon from one atom and interacting it with the other atom. The success probability of each method is compared, as well as the quality of the entangled states produced by each one, taking into account imperfections which appear in a specific experimental implementation of such memories. We find that there is a tradeoff between success probability and entangled state quality when coherent states are used, and that method 3 provides higher-quality entangled states than is possible with the other two methods.
The distribution of quantum states over long distances is limited by photon loss. Straightforward amplification as in classical telecommunications is not an option in quantum communication because of the no-cloning theorem. This problem could be overcome by implementing quantum repeater protocols, which create long-distance entanglement from shorter-distance entanglement via entanglement swapping. Such protocols require the capacity to create entanglement in a heralded fashion, to store it in quantum memories, and to swap it. One attractive general strategy for realizing quantum repeaters is based on the use of atomic ensembles as quantum memories, in combination with linear optical techniques and photon counting to perform all required operations. Here the theoretical and experimental status quo of this very active field are reviewed. The potentials of different approaches are compared quantitatively, with a focus on the most immediate goal of outperforming the direct transmission of photons.
Quantum networking, heralded as the next frontier in communication networks, envisions a realm where quantum computers and devices collaborate to unlock capabilities beyond what is possible with the Internet. A critical component for realizing a long-distance quantum network, and ultimately, the Quantum Internet, is the quantum repeater. As with the race to build a scalable quantum computer with different technologies, various schemes exist for building quantum repeaters. This article offers a gentle introduction to the two-way “all-photonic quantum repeaters,” a recent addition to quantum repeater technologies. In contrast to conventional approaches, these repeaters eliminate the need for quantum memories, offering the dual benefits of higher repetition rates and intrinsic tolerance to both quantum operational errors and photon losses. Using visualization and simple rules for manipulating graph states, we describe how all-photonic quantum repeaters work. We discuss the problem of the increased volume of classical communication required by this scheme, which places a huge processing requirement on the end nodes. We address this problem by presenting a solution that decreases the amount of classical communication by three orders of magnitude. We conclude by highlighting other key open challenges in translating the theoretical all-photonic framework into real-world implementation, providing insights into the practical considerations and future research directions of all-photonic quantum repeater technology.
The distribution of quantum states over long distances is limited by photon loss. Straightforward amplification as in classical telecommunications is not an option in quantum communication because of the no-cloning theorem. This problem could be overcome by implementing quantum repeater protocols, which create long-distance entanglement from shorter-distance entanglement via entanglement swapping. Such protocols require the capacity to create entanglement in a heralded fashion, to store it in quantum memories, and to swap it. One attractive general strategy for realizing quantum repeaters is based on the use of atomic ensembles as quantum memories, in combination with linear optical techniques and photon counting to perform all required operations. Here we review the theoretical and experimental status quo of this very active field. We compare the potential of different approaches quantitatively, with a focus on the most immediate goal of outperforming the direct transmission of photons.
When built, quantum repeater networks will require classical network protocols to control the quantum operations. However, existing work on repeaters has focused on the quantum operations themselves, with less attention paid to the contents, semantics, ordering and reliability of the classical control messages. In this work we define and describe our implementation of the classical control protocols. The state machines and packet sequences for the three protocol layers are presented, and operation confirmed by running the protocols over simulations of the physical network. We also show that proper management of the resources in a bottleneck link allows the aggregate throughput of two end-to-end flows to substantially exceed that of a single flow. Our layered architectural framework will support independent evolution of the separate protocol layers. Networks of quantum repeaters utilize three concepts to execute a distributed algorithm that creates entangled quantum states between nodes that are far apart: a basic entanglement mechanism which depends on the physical implementation, error management (in this work, we study a method known as purification), and finally a quantum state propagation layer (here we implement entanglement swapping, which builds multi-hop connections from single-hop connections). Some researchers are investigating approaches that are substantially different from entanglement swapping [30, 24, 19]. Here we focus on swapping, but the layered architecture approach is broadly applicable, allowing other implementations to replace only a single layer in the protocol stack. Previous work primarily focused on the physical and mathematical tools for building repeaters. Classical information is also needed to enable teleportation and swapping, as many quantum operations are not deterministic, and results of quantum measurements need to be reported to distant partners before further operations can proceed. Also, operations in the middle of the network must be coordinated to route and swap properly. This requires classical messages to make operations robust, but message propagation times penalize performance. Even though this delay is usually included in repeater simulations, prior work has not defined the protocols in detail, especially with respect to how all of the nodes make consistent decisions in a timely fashion. In this work, we introduce a protocol stack for networks of quantum repeaters that considers all the necessary classical messages and which can be easily adapted for different approaches at all three protocol layers. We run simulations of competing flows on a dumbbell topology in order to increase our confidence in the behavior of our network protocols. By adjusting the fidelity thresholds required for entanglement swapping, we show that some configurations boost the aggregate throughput for multiple flows significantly above the maximum for a single flow, taking advantage of resources that would otherwise sit idle. The operation of such complex networks and such delicate tuning of the system without formal protocol definitions would not be possible. Previous work has also concentrated almost exclusively on the dedicated use of a single line or chain of repeaters, delivering Bell pairs only to the two nodes at the ends of the chain. Networks, however, typically have more than two end points, and allow any pair of these end nodes to communicate. More topologically complex networks, with numerous end nodes, are obviously much more scalable than connecting every possible pair of nodes using a dedicated line of repeaters. we investigate how classical multiplexing schemes translate to the domain of quantum repeaters, in order to manage shared resources and active communication flows of data from different stations. We simulate four sharing protocols in a complex network with competing traffic. Circuit switching gives any individual flow the best performance, but makes poor use of the overall network and is inflexible. We use circuit switching as our baseline case to compare time division multiplexing, buffer space multiplexing, and statistical multiplexing, and show that all multiplexing schemes are better than circuit switching. For the particular network simulated, we find that statistical multiplexing outperforms time division multiplexing by 28% and buffer space multiplexing by 13%. We find that all three multiplexing schemes are fair; each flow is penalized a similar percentage of its throughput as the the total number of users in the network increases. Finally, statistical multiplexing requires no network-wide coordination of the use of quantum memory or channels, and is easier to implement than a robust, scalable scheme for the other protocols. Our current results suggest that the best strategy for quantum repeater networks is statistical multiplexing. (This is in fact the quantum analogue of the basis on which the Internet works.) However, our current simulations are done with no degradation of memory over time, using the assumption of quantum error-corrected memory at each repeater; inclusion of decoherence and a finite qubit lifetime remains as future work.
We present a hybrid quantum repeater protocol for the long-distance distribution of atomic entangled states beyond qubits. In our scheme, imperfect noisy entangled pairs of two qudits, i.e., two discrete-variable d-level systems, each of, in principle, arbitrary dimension d, are initially shared between the intermediate stations of the channel. This is achieved via local, sufficiently strong light-matter interactions, involving optical coherent states and their transmission after these interactions, and optical measurements on the transmitted field modes, especially efficient continuous-variable homodyne detections (``hybrid'' here refers to the simultaneous exploitation of discrete- and continuous-variable degrees of freedom for the local processing and storage of entangled states as well as their nonlocal distribution, respectively) and unambiguous state discrimination. For qutrits we quantify the light-matter entanglement that can be effectively shared through an elementary lossy channel, and for a repeater spacing of up to 10 km we show that the realistic (lossy) qutrit entanglement is even larger than any ideal (loss-free) qubit entanglement. After including qudit entanglement purification and swapping procedures, we calculate the long-distance entangled-pair distribution rates and the final entangled-state fidelities for total communication distances of up to 1280 km. For example, employing unambiguous state discrimination, with three rounds of purification, entangled qudit pairs of near-unit fidelity can be distributed over 1280 km at an ideal maximal rate (assuming perfect gate operations) on the order of 100 Hz.