Abstract
Quantum repeaters will be critical to quantum communication and quantum computation. Here, we describe a mechanism that permits the creation of entanglement between two qubits, connected by fibre, with probability arbitrarily close to one and in constant time. We show how this mechanism may be extended to ensure that the entanglement has high fidelity without compromising these properties. Finally, we describe how it may be used to construct a quantum repeater that is capable of creating a linear quantum network connecting two distant qubits with high fidelity. The communication rate is shown to be a function of the maximum distance between any two adjacent quantum repeaters rather than of the entire length of the network.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by European Union seventh framework projects Hybrid Information Processing (HIP), Quantum Interfaces, Sensors, and Communication based on Entanglement (Q-ESSENCE), a Hewlett Packard Laboratories Innovation Research Grant and Japanese grants from the Specially Promoted Research in Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and the Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST).
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W.J.M., K.A.H. and K.N. conceived the original entanglement-distribution concept. All authors contributed to the final design of the network. W.J.M. and A.M.S. prepared the manuscript with input from S.J.D., K.A.H. and K.N.
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Munro, W., Harrison, K., Stephens, A. et al. From quantum multiplexing to high-performance quantum networking. Nature Photon 4, 792–796 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.213
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.213
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