Abstract
Feasible distribution of quantum entanglement over long distances remains a fundamental step towards quantum secure communication and quantum network implementations. Quantum repeater nodes based on quantum memories promise to overcome exponential signal decay inherent to optical implementations of quantum communication. While performance of current quantum memories hinders their practical application, multimode solutions with multiplexing can offer tremendous increase in entanglement distribution rates. We propose to use a wavevector-multiplexed atomic quantum memory (WV-MUX-QM) as a fundamental block of a multiplexed quantum repeater architecture. We show the WV-MUX-QM platform to provide quasi-deterministic entanglement generation over extended distances, mitigating the fundamental issue of optical loss even with currently available quantum memory devices, and exceeding performance of repeaterless solutions as well as other repeater-based protocols such as temporal multiplexing. We establish the entangled-bit (ebit) rate per number of employed nodes as a practical figure of merit reflecting the cost-efficiency of larger inter-node distances.
Highlights
Entanglement is an essential resource for the most promising quantum information protocols [1, 2] enabling, among others, secure quantum communication [3,4,5]
The WV-MUX-QM platform is based on an atomic quantum memory
In this work we show the feasibility of wavevector multiplexed quantum memories (WV-MUX-QM) for nearterm quantum repeaters, as an alternative to temporally, spectrally or spatially-multimode platforms
Summary
Entanglement is an essential resource for the most promising quantum information protocols [1, 2] enabling, among others, secure quantum communication [3,4,5]. The optical implementations of such protocols face the exponential transmission losses inherent to photonic systems and greatly limiting the feasible distance at which high fidelity entangled states can be distributed. To overcome this obstacle, noise-tolerant quantum repeaters have been proposed for entanglement connection and purification over shorter elementary lengths [6]. Promising quantum repeater architectures involve linear optics, quantum memories and singlephoton detection [7, 8]; currently available memory lifetimes as well as retrieval and single-photon detection efficiencies limit the feasibility of such repeaters at practical distances of a few hundred km [9, 10]. As an alternative to temporal, spectral or spatial micro-ensemble modes [20], a highlymultimode wavevector multiplexed quantum memory (WV-MUX-QM) has been recently demonstrated [21]
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