IEEE Communications Magazine
Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Quantum Internet Modeling: Concepts, Implementation, and Future Directions
Abdulmohsen A. Alsaui, Sunish Kumar Orappanpara Soman, B. D. E. McNiven, Hyundong Shin, Octavia A. Dobre
Abstract
The classical Internet faces increasing limitations as data generation and device interconnectivity expand at unprecedented rates. In recent years, this has highlighted the need for communication frameworks that surpass classical limitations. The quantum Internet (QI), composed of multiple layers of quantum communication networks (QCNs), holds promise for remarkable capabilities in secure transmission, distributed quantum computing, and quantum-enhanced sensing. Accurate and scalable modeling of QCNs is essential for designing, analyzing, and optimizing QI protocols under realistic physical conditions. To model such open quantum systems under Markovian noise, the Lindblad master equation is widely used, but its modeling complexity grows exponentially with the system size. In this work, we introduce a learned approach that utilizes a physics-informed neural network (PINN) to model the dynamics of open quantum systems, which embeds the Lindblad formalism directly into the neural network's loss function. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by simulating the entanglement fidelity decay of a two-qubit Bell state under energy damping and phase decoherence noise, which is a relevant scenario for entanglement-based QI protocols. Preliminary numerical results show that the PINN-based solver aligns with conventional partial differential equation techniques while offering improved scalability. These findings suggest that PINNs could serve as an efficient approach for accelerating the analysis of future quantum networking solutions. Finally, we conclude by outlining key future directions for scaling the framework to support QCN-level optimization.