Architecture and protocols for all-photonic quantum repeaters
This work extends all-photonic quantum repeater schemes beyond secret key sharing to broader quantum internet applications, addressing practical implementation challenges for end nodes.
The paper proposes a new emitter-photonic qubit building block and protocol for all-photonic quantum repeaters that reduces the number of emissive quantum memories required at end nodes and enables seamless integration with memory-based repeaters. The protocol supports distributed computation and teleportation by addressing connection establishment, logical qubit decoding, and Pauli frame corrections.
The all-photonic quantum repeater scheme, utilizing a type of graph state called the repeater graph state (RGS), promises resilience to photon losses and operational errors, offering a fast Bell pair generation rate limited only by the RGS creation time (rather than enforced round-trip waits). While existing research has predominantly focused on RGS generation and secret key sharing rate analysis, there is a need to extend investigations to encompass broader applications, such as distributed computation and teleportation, the main tasks envisioned for the Quantum Internet. Here we propose a new emitter-photonic qubit building block and an RGS protocol that addresses several key considerations: end node involvement in connection establishment, decoding of logical qubits within the RGS, and computing the Pauli frame corrections at each participating node to ensure the desired correct end-to-end Bell pair state. Our proposed building block significantly reduces the total number of emissive quantum memories required for end nodes and seamlessly integrates all-photonic and memory-based repeaters under the same communication protocol. We also present an algorithm for decoding logical measurement results, employing graphical reasoning based on graph state manipulation rules.