No Arabic abstract
Based on the interaction between a three-level system and a microtoroidal resonator, we present a scheme for long-distance quantum communication in which entanglement generation with near 0.5 success probability and swaps can be implemented by accurate state detection via measuring about 100 photons. With this scheme the average time of successful entanglement distribution over 2500 km with high fidelity can be decreased to only about 30 ms, by 7 orders of magnitude smaller compared with famous Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller (DLCZ) protocol [L.-M. Duan {it et al.} Nature (London) {bf414}, 413 (2001)].
Despite the tremendous progress of quantum cryptography, efficient quantum communication over long distances (>1000km) remains an outstanding challenge due to fiber attenuation and operation errors accumulated over the entire communication distance. Quantum repeaters, as a promising approach, can overcome both photon loss and operation errors, and hence significantly speedup the communication rate. Depending on the methods used to correct loss and operation errors, all the proposed QR schemes can be classified into three categories (generations). Here we present the first systematic comparison of three generations of quantum repeaters by evaluating the cost of both temporal and physical resources, and identify the optimized quantum repeater architecture for a given set of experimental parameters. Our work provides a roadmap for the experimental realizations of highly efficient quantum networks over transcontinental distances.
Chiral quantum networks provide a promising route for realising quantum information processing and quantum communication. Here, we describe how two distant quantum nodes of chiral quantum network become dynamically entangled by a photon transfer through a common 1D chiral waveguide. We harness the directional asymmetry in chirally-coupled single-mode ring resonators to generate entangled state between two atoms. We report a concurrence of up to 0.969, a huge improvement over the 0.736 which was suggested and analyzed in great detail in Ref. [1]. This significant enhancement is achieved by introducing microtoroidal resonators which serve as efficient photonic interface between light and matter. Robustness of our protocol to experimental imperfections such as fluctuations in inter-nodal distance, imperfect chirality, various detunings and atomic spontaneous decay is demonstrated. Our proposal can be utilised for long-distance entanglement generation in quantum networks which is a key ingredient for many applications in quantum computing and quantum information processing.
We construct a theory for long-distance quantum communication based on sharing entanglement through a linear chain of $N$ elementary swapping segments of length~$L=Nl$ where $l$ is the length of each elementary swap setup. Entanglement swapping is achieved by linear optics, photon counting and post-selection, and we include effects due to multi-photon sources, transmission loss and detector inefficiencies and dark counts. Specifically we calculate the resultant four-mode state shared by the two parties at the two ends of the chain, and we derive the two-photon coincidence rate expected for this state and thereby the visibility of this long-range entangled state. The expression is a nested sum with each sum extending from zero to infinite photons, and we solve the case $N=2$ exactly for the ideal case (zero dark counts, unit-efficiency detectors and no transmission loss) and numerically for $N=2$ in the non-ideal case with truncation at $n_text{max}=3$ photons in each mode. For the general case, we show that the computational complexity for the numerical solution is $n_text{max}^{12N}$.
High-quality long-distance entanglement is essential for both quantum communication and scalable quantum networks. Entanglement purification is to distill high-quality entanglement from low-quality entanglement in a noisy environment and it plays a key role in quantum repeaters. The previous significant entanglement purification experiments require two pairs of low-quality entangled states and were demonstrated in table-top. Here we propose and report a high-efficiency and long-distance entanglement purification using only one pair of hyperentangled states. We also demonstrate its practical application in entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD). One pair of polarization spatial-mode hyperentanglement was distributed over 11 km multicore fiber (noisy channel). After purification, the fidelity of polarization entanglement arises from 0.771 to 0.887 and the effective key rate in entanglement-based QKD increases from 0 to 0.332. The values of Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality of polarization entanglement arises from 1.829 to 2.128. Moreover, by using one pair of hyperentanglement and deterministic controlled-NOT gate, the total purification efficiency can be estimated as 6.6x10^3 times than the experiment using two pairs of entangled states with spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) sources. Our results offer the potential to be implemented as part of a full quantum repeater and large scale quantum network.
The architecture proposed by Duan, Lukin, Cirac, and Zoller (DLCZ) for long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles is analyzed. Its fidelity and throughput in entanglement distribution, entanglement swapping, and quantum teleportation is derived within a framework that accounts for multiple excitations in the ensembles as well as loss and asymmetries in the channel. The DLCZ performance metrics that are obtained are compared to the corresponding results for the trapped-atom quantum communication architecture that has been proposed by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University (MIT/NU). Both systems are found to be capable of high-fidelity entanglement distribution. However, the DLCZ scheme only provides conditional teleportation and repeater operation, whereas the MIT/NU architecture affords full Bell-state measurements on its trapped atoms. Moreover, it is shown that achieving unity conditional fidelity in DLCZ teleportation and repeater operation requires ideal photon-number resolving detectors. The maximum conditional fidelities for DLCZ teleportation and repeater operation that can be realized with non-resolving detectors are 1/2 and 2/3, respectively.