On the error analysis of quantum repeaters with encoding

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the performance of one-way quantum repeaters, compares them with two-way schemes, and discusses their scalability for large quantum networks, addressing exponential optical losses in quantum communication.

Contribution

It provides a detailed error analysis of one-way quantum repeaters and compares their performance with two-way schemes, extending the analysis to large-scale networks.

Findings

One-way quantum repeaters have distinct performance characteristics from two-way schemes.

The analysis reveals conditions under which one-way repeaters outperform two-way schemes.

The framework generalizes to large-scale quantum network architectures.

Abstract

Losses of optical signals scale exponentially with the distance. Quantum repeaters are devices that tackle these losses in quantum communication by splitting the total distance into shorter parts. Today two types of quantum repeaters are subject of research in the field of quantum information: Those that use two-way communication and those that only use one-way communication. Here we explain the details of the performance analysis for repeaters of the second type. Furthermore we compare the two different schemes. Finally we show how the performance analysis generalizes to large-scale quantum networks.