Large-scale quantum network coding (LQNC) is conceived for distributing entangled qubits over large-scale quantum communication networks supporting both teleportation and quantum key distribution. More specifically, the LQNC is characterized by detailing the encoding and decoding process for distributing entangled pairs of qubits to
Mpairs of source-and-target users connected via a backbone route of
Nhops. The LQNC-based system advocated is then compared with entanglement swapping-based systems for highlighting the benefits of the proposed LQNC.
Large-scale quantum networks, necessary for distributed quantum information processing, are posited to have quantum entangled systems between distant network nodes. The extent and quality of distributed entanglement in a quantum network, that is its functionality, depends on its topology, edge-parameter distributions and the distribution protocol. We uncover the parametric entanglement topography and introduce the notion of typical and maximal viable regions for entanglement-enabled tasks in a general model of large-scale quantum networks. We show that such a topographical analysis, in terms of viability regions, reveals important functional information about quantum networks, provides experimental targets for the edge parameters and can guide efficient quantum network design. Applied to a photonic quantum network, such a topographical analysis shows that in a network with radius
103 kms and 1500 nodes, arbitrary pairs of nodes can establish quantum secure keys at a rate of
Rsec=1 kHz using
1 MHz entanglement generation sources on the edges and as few as 3 entanglement swappings at intermediate nodes along network paths.
Abstract Quantum networks describe communication networks that are based on quantum entanglement. A concurrence percolation theory has been recently developed to determine the required entanglement to enable communication between two distant stations in an arbitrary quantum network. Unfortunately, concurrence percolation has been calculated only for very small networks or large networks without loops. Here, we develop a set of mathematical tools for approximating the concurrence percolation threshold for unprecedented large-scale quantum networks by estimating the path-length distribution, under the assumption that all paths between a given pair of nodes have no overlap. We show that our approximate method agrees closely with analytical results from concurrence percolation theory. The numerical results we present include 2D square lattices of 2002 nodes and complex networks of up to 104 nodes. The entanglement percolation threshold of a quantum network is a crucial parameter for constructing a real-world communication network based on entanglement, and our method offers a significant speed-up for the intensive computations involved.