In this article we present a simple repeater scheme based on the negatively-charged nitrogen vacancy centre in diamond (NV-). Each repeater node is built from simple modules comprising an optical cavity containing a single NV-, with one nuclear spin
from 15N as quantum memory. The operation in the module only uses deterministic processes and interactions and achieves high fidelity (>99%) operation, and modules are connected by optical fiber. In the repeater node architecture, the processes between modules by photons can be in principle deterministic, however current limitations on optical components lead to the processes to be probabilistic but heralded. The most resource modest repeater architecture contains at least two modules at each node, and the repeater nodes are than connected by telecom wavelength entangled photon pairs. We discuss the performance of quantum repeaters starting from the minimum-resource strategy with several modules (~10) and then incorporating more resource-intense strategies step by step. Our architecture enables large-scale quantum information networks with existing technology.
Quantum physics is known to allow for completely new ways to create, manipulate and store information. Quantum communication - the ability to transmit quantum information - is a primitive necessary for any quantum internet. At its core, quantum commu
nication generally requires the formation of entangled links between remote locations. The performance of these links is limited by the classical signaling time between such locations - necessitating the need for long lived quantum memories. Here we present the design of a communications network which neither requires the establishment of entanglement between remote locations nor the use of long-lived quantum memories. The rate at which quantum data can be transmitted along the network is only limited by the time required to perform efficient local gate operations. Our scheme thus potentially provides higher communications rates than previously thought possible.
