Secret key rates for an encoded quantum repeater

Physical Review A, 2009

We propose a new approach to implement quantum repeaters for long distance quantum communication. Our protocol generates a backbone of encoded Bell pairs and uses the procedure of classical error correction during simultaneous entanglement connection. We illustrate that the repeater protocol with simple Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) encoding can significantly extend the communication distance, while still maintaining a fast key generation rate.

Physical Review A, 2013

We analyse various prominent quantum repeater protocols in the context of long-distance quantum key distribution. These protocols are the original quantum repeater proposal by Briegel et al , the so-called hybrid quantum repeater using optical coherent states dispersively interacting with atomic spin qubits, and the DLCZtype repeater using atomic ensembles together with linear optics and, in its most recent extension, heralded qubit amplifiers. For our analysis, we investigate the most important experimental parameters of every repeater component and find their minimally required values for obtaining a non-zero secret key. Additionally, we examine in detail the impact of device imperfections on the final secret key rate and on the optimal number of rounds of distillation when the entangled states are purified right after their initial distribution.

Physical Review A, 2010

A feasible route towards implementing long-distance quantum key distribution (QKD) systems relies on probabilistic schemes for entanglement distribution and swapping as proposed in the work of Duan, Lukin, Cirac, and Zoller (DLCZ) [Nature 414, 413 (2001)]. Here, we calculate the conditional throughput and fidelity of entanglement for DLCZ quantum repeaters, by accounting for the DLCZ self-purification property, in the presence of multiple excitations in the ensemble memories as well as loss and other sources of inefficiency in the channel and measurement modules. We then use our results to find the generation rate of secure key bits for QKD systems that rely on DLCZ quantum repeaters. We compare the key generation rate per logical memory employed in the two cases of with and without a repeater node. We find the cross-over distance beyond which the repeater system outperforms the non-repeater one. That provides us with the optimum inter-node distancing in quantum repeater systems. We also find the optimal excitation probability at which the QKD rate peaks. Such an optimum probability, in most regimes of interest, is insensitive to the total distance.

Nature communications, 2017

Quantum communications promises reliable transmission of quantum information, efficient distribution of entanglement and generation of completely secure keys. For all these tasks, we need to determine the optimal point-to-point rates that are achievable by two remote parties at the ends of a quantum channel, without restrictions on their local operations and classical communication, which can be unlimited and two-way. These two-way assisted capacities represent the ultimate rates that are reachable without quantum repeaters. Here, by constructing an upper bound based on the relative entropy of entanglement and devising a dimension-independent technique dubbed 'teleportation stretching', we establish these capacities for many fundamental channels, namely bosonic lossy channels, quantum-limited amplifiers, dephasing and erasure channels in arbitrary dimension. In particular, we exactly determine the fundamental rate-loss tradeoff affecting any protocol of quantum key distribut...

Physical Review A

Quantum repeaters represent one possible way to achieve long-distance quantum key distribution. Collins et al. in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 060502 (2007)] proposed multiplexing as method to increase the repeater rate and to decrease the requirement in memory coherence time. Motivated by the experimental fact that long-range connections are practically demanding, in this paper we extend the original quantum repeater multiplexing protocol to the case of short-range connection. We derive analytical formulas for the repeater rate and we show that for short connection lengths it is possible to have most of the benefits of a full-range multiplexing protocol. Then we incorporate decoherence of quantum memories and we study the optimal matching for the Bell-state measurement protocol permitting to minimize memory requirements. Finally, we calculate the secret key rate and we show that the improvement via finite-range multiplexing is of the same order of magnitude as via full-range multiplexing.

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, 2021

Quantum network coding can effectively improve the aggregate throughput of quantum networks and alleviate bottlenecks caused by topological constraints. Most of previous schemes are dedicated to the efficient teleportation of unknown quantum states in a quantum network. Herein a proposal for transmission of deterministic known states over quantum repeater network based on quantum measurements. We show that the new protocol offers advantages over three aspects. Firstly, the senders in our protocol obtain the knowledge of the quantum state to be transmitted, which enables the autonomy of quantum network transmission. Secondly, we study the quantum repeater network coding for longdistance deterministic quantum state communication. Quantum repeater network initialization requires entanglement distribution only among neighboring nodes, greatly saving entanglement resources, channel overhead and storage costs. Thirdly, based on Pauli measurements and local complementation, new protocol realizes parallel coding operations to mitigate latency issues sufficiently. Combining quantum network coding and quantum remote state preparation technology, our protocol provides an important solution for deterministic known states transmission over large-scale quantum network in the future.

Physical Review A, 2009

Memory dephasing and its impact on the rate of entanglement generation in quantum repeaters is addressed. For systems that rely on probabilistic schemes for entanglement distribution and connection, we estimate the maximum achievable rate per employed memory for our optimized partial nesting protocol, when a large number of memories are being used in each node. The above rate scales polynomially with distance, L, if quantum memories with infinitely long coherence times are available or if we employ a fully fault-tolerant scheme. For memories with finite coherence times and no fault-tolerant protection, the above rate optimistically degrades exponentially in √ L, regardless of the employed purification scheme. It decays, at best, exponentially in L if no purification is used.

Quantum Communications Realized Ii, 2009

Quantum repeaters enable us to distribute entanglement between remote parties by relying on a network of quantum memory units that exhibit efficient coupling to light, scalability, and long coherence times. Entanglement is initially distributed between nearest neighbors and then extended to the far-end nodes using entanglement swapping techniques. For real-time applications, such as quantum key distribution, the above tasks must be repeated successively, according to a proper protocol, to generate entangled states at a certain rate. This paper studies a number of such protocols and the interplay between the rate of entanglement generation, the number of employed memories, and the coherence time of memory units.

2020

Communication over a quantum broadcast channel with cooperation between the receivers is considered. The first form of cooperation addressed is classical conferencing, where Receiver 1 can send classical messages to Receiver 2. Another cooperation setting involves quantum conferencing, where Receiver 1 can teleport a quantum state to Receiver 2. When Receiver 1 is not required to recover information and its sole purpose is to help the transmission to Receiver 2, the model reduces to the quantum primitive relay channel. The quantum conferencing setting is intimately related to quantum repeaters, as the sender, Receiver 1, and Receiver 2 can be viewed as the transmitter, the repeater, and the destination receiver, respectively. We develop lower and upper bounds on the capacity region in each setting. In particular, the cutset upper bound and the decode-forward lower bound are derived for the primitive relay channel. Furthermore, we present an entanglement-formation lower bound, where ...

Physical Review A, 2016