Emulation of Entanglement Distribution Networks on a Quantum Computer
This work provides a methodology for emulating quantum networks on quantum computers, which is important for researchers studying quantum communication, but the findings are incremental as they highlight known hardware constraints.
The authors emulate quantum entanglement distribution networks on quantum computers, modeling imperfect Bell-pair sources and communication delays. They find that mathematically equivalent noise models yield profoundly different results due to hardware constraints, emphasizing careful experiment design.
We investigate how quantum computers can be used to emulate quantum networks and study their performance under practical impairments. In particular, we evaluate how degraded entanglement and communication latency affect teleportation-based distributed multipartite-entanglement-state construction. We model imperfect Bell-pair sources using depolarizing noise channels and classical communication delays using thermal relaxation. We implement the depolarization using Stinespring dilation, randomly applied Pauli errors, and quasi-probability decompositions, evaluating the latter two on IQM quantum hardware and all three in simulation. We then study the performance of the entanglement distribution under noise generated by the aforementioned models. Although these noise models are mathematically equivalent, we find that hardware constraints result in profound differences in the corresponding results, highlighting the importance of careful experiment design.