Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Loss-tolerant entanglement swapping via quantum parity codes

Shuikai Hou, P.X. Yan, Zhanghua Cao

Published Mar 25, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Entanglement swapping (ES) plays a key role in long-distance quantum communication. However, photon loss is inevitable due to noise in quantum channels, which makes existing ES focusing on the physical qubit fail to work, thereby degrading the efficiency of quantum communication. To address this issue, we resort to quantum parity codes (QPCs) and quantum nondemolition detection (QND) to realize a loss-tolerant ES (LTES), where each qubit is encoded into a logical qubit consisting of three levels: logical level, block level, and physical level. The research findings illustrate that the LTES can be successfully performed as long as the logical Bell state completely contains at least one block and each block contains at least one pair of physical Bell states. In addition, we evaluate the influence of the imperfect QND on the LTES, indicating that if the error probability of QND is lower than 0.47, the entanglement achieves a fidelity of 0.99 after performing the LTES. As a consequence, this LTES has the potential to pave the way for long-distance quantum communication.

DOI
10.1364/josab.588820

Related papers

Loss-Tolerant Quantum Communication via Bosonic-GKP-Parity-Encoding

S. Nibedita Swain, Timothy C. Ralph

Quantum repeaters constitute a promising platform for enabling long-distance quantum communication and may ultimately serve as the backbone of a secure quantum internet, a scalable quantum network, or a distributed quantum computer. An efficient approach to encoding qubits within an error correcting code is provided by bosonic codes, in which even a single oscillator mode can function as a sufficiently large physical system. In this work, we initially investigate the bosonic Gottesman Kitaev Preskill (GKP) code as a promising platform for loss correcting quantum repeaters, compatible with room temperature implementation, and analyse how loss and other noise sources propagate through the circuit using Heisenberg evolution. We analyse three quantum repeater protocols in which transmission loss is suppressed at the cost of logical errors, identifying a relay-like teleamplifier as the optimal scheme. This enables long distance quantum communication via densely packed nodes without higher-level encoding, and we evaluate the resulting secure key rates exploiting analog syndrome information. Furthermore, we propose a concatenated Bell-state measurement (CBSM) scheme with a modified parity encoding based on GKP qubits, CV measurement with teleamplifier and a clipping method that corrects transmission loss without introducing logical errors. This significantly enhances the possible secure key distance. We find that GKP based repeaters can achieve performance comparable to approaches relying on photonic qubits, while requiring orders of magnitude fewer qubits. Our parity encoded GKP repeater protocol achieves a substantially higher secret key rate than existing GKP based repeater schemes while maintaining a comparable resource overhead.

quant-pharXiv:2604.09002•Apr 13, 2026•0 citations

Long-distance quantum communication using concatenated ring graph codes

Love A. Pettersson, Anders Søndberg Sørensen

To realize long-distance quantum communication, it is crucial to design quantum repeater architectures that can deal with transmission losses and operational errors. Code concatenation of photonic graph codes is a promising way to achieve this; however, existing concatenated codes that can correct both transmission losses and operational errors are extremely hardware-demanding. We propose a one-way quantum repeater architecture based on concatenated ring graph codes and linear optical Bell-state measurements. We construct a scheme to generate the concatenated ring graph codes using quantum emitters, where the number of matter qubits scales linearly with concatenation depth. Furthermore, we devise a measurement strategy at each repeater station with a simple experimental setup where photons are measured in the order that they are created and show that entanglement swapping is fault-tolerant to both transmission losses and operational errors. This allows for long-distance quantum communication ($> 10^4$ km) at a kHZ rate even in the presence of single qubit error rates $ε> 10^{-3}$.

arXiv:2503.19822•Mar 25, 2025•0 citations

Measurement-based logical qubit entanglement purification

Peishun Yan, Lan Zhou, Wei Zhong +1 more

Entanglement purification is the distilling of high-quality entanglement from low-quality entanglement and is a key element in the quantum repeater. As a new branch of entanglement purification, the measurement-based entanglement purification protocol (MBEPP) only requires one to perform the Bell state measurement to couple resource states with noisy pairs, and it tolerates more local noise than the conventional purification protocols. Existing MBEPPs usually focus on physical qubit entanglement. In this paper, we propose a measurement-based logical qubit entanglement purification protocol (MBLEPP) with quantum nondemolition detection (QND), where the qubit is encoded in the quantum parity code. The results show that this MBLEPP can also work with photon loss under the conditions that each block of the logical Bell state measurement contains at least one physical qubit, that at least one of the blocks is intact, and that the entanglement exists between all blocks. Moreover, we also consider the MBLEPP with imperfect QND. We show that below a certain QND error threshold, this MBLEPP can still work. In this way, this MBLEPP not only obtains high-fidelity entanglement but also tolerates photon loss and the error from imperfect QND. This MBLEPP combines the benefits of the MBEPP and quantum error correction code and may have potential application in long-distance quantum communication.

Physical Review A•Jun 10, 2022•43 citations

Flying-cat parity checks for quantum error correction

Z. M. McIntyre, W. A. Coish

Long range, multiqubit parity checks have applications in both quantum error correction and measurement-based entanglement generation. Such parity checks could be performed using qubit-state-dependent phase shifts on propagating pulses of light described by coherent states | α 〉 of the electromagnetic field. We consider “flying-cat” parity checks based on an entangling operation that is quantum nondemolition for Schrödinger's cat states | α 〉 ± | − α 〉 . This operation encodes parity information in the phase of maximally distinguishable coherent states | ± α 〉 , which can be read out using a phase-sensitive measurement of the electromagnetic field. In contrast to many implementations, where single-qubit errors and measurement errors can be treated as independent, photon loss during flying-cat parity checks introduces errors on physical qubits at a rate that is anticorrelated with the probability for measurement errors. We analyze this trade-off for three-qubit parity checks, which are a requirement for universal fault-tolerant quantum computing with the subsystem surface code. We further show how a six-qubit entangled “tetrahedron” state can be prepared using these three-qubit parity checks. The tetrahedron state can be used as a resource for controlled quantum teleportation of a two-qubit state or as a source of shared randomness with potential applications in three-party quantum key distribution. Finally, we provide conditions for performing high-quality flying-cat parity checks in a state-of-the-art circuit QED architecture, accounting for qubit decoherence, internal cavity losses, and finite-duration pulses, in addition to transmission losses. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

arXiv:2402.17001•Physical Review Research•Jun 4, 2024•3 citations

A Loss Resilient Entanglement Swapping Protocol using Non-Classical States of Light

Ryan C. Parker

Distributing and sharing entanglement at a distance is a key ingredient in many future quantum communication protocols, however entanglement is a fragile resource and can break down upon interacting with the environment. Within this thesis we present two possible entanglement swapping protocols, and show that these protocols are resilient to small levels of photonic losses. We propose the use of these protocols in quantum communication schemes that require shared entangled qubits, in the form of a Bell state. \nThe input states to our proposed protocols are hybrid entangled states, which are discrete-variable and continuous-variable entangled states. We use the vacuum and \nsingle photon Fock state as our discrete half, which is stationary in our entanglement swapping protocol, whereas the continuous variable half is modelled as travelling through lossy optical fibre before being measured. The first protocol uses coherent states in a superposition as propagating modes in our entanglement swapping setup, \nwhereas the second, more complicated, protocol uses superposed cat states. \nWe model photonic losses by applying a beam-splitter of transmission T to our propagating continuous variable modes, along with an input vacuum state. We also model the more realistic circumstance in which the losses in these two continuous variable modes are not equal. We then detect these continuous variable modes using a vacuum projective measurement and balanced homodyne detection. We also investigate homodyne measurement imperfections and non-ideal outcomes, as well as success probabilities of these measurement schemes. We calculate the entanglement negativity and linear entropy of our final two qubit state, as well as fidelity against the |\\Phi^+> Bell state in the coherent state protocol, and a phase-rotated |\\Phi^+(\\alpha)> Bell state in the cat state regime. \nWe demonstrate that a small amount of loss mismatch does not destroy the overall entanglement, thus demonstrating the physical practicality of this protocol.

•Oct 5, 2018•1 citation

Error-correcting entanglement swapping using a practical logical photon encoding

Paul Hilaire, Edwin Barnes, Sophia E. Economou +1 more

Several emerging quantum technologies, including quantum networks, and modular and fusion-based quantum computing, rely crucially on the ability to perform photonic Bell state measurements. Therefore, photon losses and the 50% success probablity upper bound of Bell state measurements pose a critical limitation to photonic quantum technologies. Here, we develop protocols that overcome these two key challenges through logical encoding of photonic qubits. Our approach uses a tree graph state logical encoding, which can be produced deterministically with a few quantum emitters, and achieves near-deterministic logical photonic Bell state measurements while also protecting against errors including photon losses, with a record loss-tolerance threshold.

arXiv:2101.11082•Physical Review A•Nov 29, 2021•25 citations
Entanglement swapping (ES) plays a key role in long-distance quantum communication. However, photon loss is inevitable due to noise in quantum channels, which makes existing ES focusing on the physical qubit fail to work, thereby degrading the efficiency of quantum communication. To address this issue, we resort to quantum parity codes (QPCs) and quantum nondemolition detection (QND) to realize a loss-tolerant ES (LTES), where each qubit is encoded into a logical qubit consisting of three levels: logical level, block level, and physical level. The research findings illustrate that the LTES can be successfully performed as long as the logical Bell state completely contains at least one block and each block contains at least one pair of physical Bell states. In addition, we evaluate the influence of the imperfect QND on the LTES, indicating that if the error probability of QND is lower than 0.47, the entanglement achieves a fidelity of 0.99 after performing the LTES. As a consequence, this LTES has the potential to pave the way for long-distance quantum communication.
Quantum repeaters constitute a promising platform for enabling long-distance quantum communication and may ultimately serve as the backbone of a secure quantum internet, a scalable quantum network, or a distributed quantum computer. An efficient approach to encoding qubits within an error correcting code is provided by bosonic codes, in which even a single oscillator mode can function as a sufficiently large physical system. In this work, we initially investigate the bosonic Gottesman Kitaev Preskill (GKP) code as a promising platform for loss correcting quantum repeaters, compatible with room temperature implementation, and analyse how loss and other noise sources propagate through the circuit using Heisenberg evolution. We analyse three quantum repeater protocols in which transmission loss is suppressed at the cost of logical errors, identifying a relay-like teleamplifier as the optimal scheme. This enables long distance quantum communication via densely packed nodes without higher-level encoding, and we evaluate the resulting secure key rates exploiting analog syndrome information. Furthermore, we propose a concatenated Bell-state measurement (CBSM) scheme with a modified parity encoding based on GKP qubits, CV measurement with teleamplifier and a clipping method that corrects transmission loss without introducing logical errors. This significantly enhances the possible secure key distance. We find that GKP based repeaters can achieve performance comparable to approaches relying on photonic qubits, while requiring orders of magnitude fewer qubits. Our parity encoded GKP repeater protocol achieves a substantially higher secret key rate than existing GKP based repeater schemes while maintaining a comparable resource overhead.
To realize long-distance quantum communication, it is crucial to design quantum repeater architectures that can deal with transmission losses and operational errors. Code concatenation of photonic graph codes is a promising way to achieve this; however, existing concatenated codes that can correct both transmission losses and operational errors are extremely hardware-demanding. We propose a one-way quantum repeater architecture based on concatenated ring graph codes and linear optical Bell-state measurements. We construct a scheme to generate the concatenated ring graph codes using quantum emitters, where the number of matter qubits scales linearly with concatenation depth. Furthermore, we devise a measurement strategy at each repeater station with a simple experimental setup where photons are measured in the order that they are created and show that entanglement swapping is fault-tolerant to both transmission losses and operational errors. This allows for long-distance quantum communication (>104> 10^4>104 km) at a kHZ rate even in the presence of single qubit error rates ε>10−3ε> 10^{-3}ε>10−3.
Entanglement purification is the distilling of high-quality entanglement from low-quality entanglement and is a key element in the quantum repeater. As a new branch of entanglement purification, the measurement-based entanglement purification protocol (MBEPP) only requires one to perform the Bell state measurement to couple resource states with noisy pairs, and it tolerates more local noise than the conventional purification protocols. Existing MBEPPs usually focus on physical qubit entanglement. In this paper, we propose a measurement-based logical qubit entanglement purification protocol (MBLEPP) with quantum nondemolition detection (QND), where the qubit is encoded in the quantum parity code. The results show that this MBLEPP can also work with photon loss under the conditions that each block of the logical Bell state measurement contains at least one physical qubit, that at least one of the blocks is intact, and that the entanglement exists between all blocks. Moreover, we also consider the MBLEPP with imperfect QND. We show that below a certain QND error threshold, this MBLEPP can still work. In this way, this MBLEPP not only obtains high-fidelity entanglement but also tolerates photon loss and the error from imperfect QND. This MBLEPP combines the benefits of the MBEPP and quantum error correction code and may have potential application in long-distance quantum communication.
Long range, multiqubit parity checks have applications in both quantum error correction and measurement-based entanglement generation. Such parity checks could be performed using qubit-state-dependent phase shifts on propagating pulses of light described by coherent states | α 〉 of the electromagnetic field. We consider “flying-cat” parity checks based on an entangling operation that is quantum nondemolition for Schrödinger's cat states | α 〉 ± | − α 〉 . This operation encodes parity information in the phase of maximally distinguishable coherent states | ± α 〉 , which can be read out using a phase-sensitive measurement of the electromagnetic field. In contrast to many implementations, where single-qubit errors and measurement errors can be treated as independent, photon loss during flying-cat parity checks introduces errors on physical qubits at a rate that is anticorrelated with the probability for measurement errors. We analyze this trade-off for three-qubit parity checks, which are a requirement for universal fault-tolerant quantum computing with the subsystem surface code. We further show how a six-qubit entangled “tetrahedron” state can be prepared using these three-qubit parity checks. The tetrahedron state can be used as a resource for controlled quantum teleportation of a two-qubit state or as a source of shared randomness with potential applications in three-party quantum key distribution. Finally, we provide conditions for performing high-quality flying-cat parity checks in a state-of-the-art circuit QED architecture, accounting for qubit decoherence, internal cavity losses, and finite-duration pulses, in addition to transmission losses. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Distributing and sharing entanglement at a distance is a key ingredient in many future quantum communication protocols, however entanglement is a fragile resource and can break down upon interacting with the environment. Within this thesis we present two possible entanglement swapping protocols, and show that these protocols are resilient to small levels of photonic losses. We propose the use of these protocols in quantum communication schemes that require shared entangled qubits, in the form of a Bell state. \nThe input states to our proposed protocols are hybrid entangled states, which are discrete-variable and continuous-variable entangled states. We use the vacuum and \nsingle photon Fock state as our discrete half, which is stationary in our entanglement swapping protocol, whereas the continuous variable half is modelled as travelling through lossy optical fibre before being measured. The first protocol uses coherent states in a superposition as propagating modes in our entanglement swapping setup, \nwhereas the second, more complicated, protocol uses superposed cat states. \nWe model photonic losses by applying a beam-splitter of transmission T to our propagating continuous variable modes, along with an input vacuum state. We also model the more realistic circumstance in which the losses in these two continuous variable modes are not equal. We then detect these continuous variable modes using a vacuum projective measurement and balanced homodyne detection. We also investigate homodyne measurement imperfections and non-ideal outcomes, as well as success probabilities of these measurement schemes. We calculate the entanglement negativity and linear entropy of our final two qubit state, as well as fidelity against the |\\Phi^+> Bell state in the coherent state protocol, and a phase-rotated |\\Phi^+(\\alpha)> Bell state in the cat state regime. \nWe demonstrate that a small amount of loss mismatch does not destroy the overall entanglement, thus demonstrating the physical practicality of this protocol.
Several emerging quantum technologies, including quantum networks, and modular and fusion-based quantum computing, rely crucially on the ability to perform photonic Bell state measurements. Therefore, photon losses and the 50% success probablity upper bound of Bell state measurements pose a critical limitation to photonic quantum technologies. Here, we develop protocols that overcome these two key challenges through logical encoding of photonic qubits. Our approach uses a tree graph state logical encoding, which can be produced deterministically with a few quantum emitters, and achieves near-deterministic logical photonic Bell state measurements while also protecting against errors including photon losses, with a record loss-tolerance threshold.