Decentralized Base-Graph Routing for the Quantum Internet

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized routing method for entangled quantum networks, enabling efficient shortest-path discovery using only local node knowledge, which is crucial for scalable quantum internet infrastructure.

Contribution

It proposes a novel decentralized routing scheme tailored for multi-level entangled quantum networks, optimizing pathfinding with local information.

Findings

Provides bounds on maximum entangled links in a path

Enables practical routing in heterogeneous quantum networks

Supports scalable quantum communication systems

Abstract

Quantum repeater networks are a fundamental of any future quantum Internet and long-distance quantum communications. The entangled quantum nodes can communicate through several different levels of entanglement, leading to a heterogeneous, multi-level network structure. The level of entanglement between the quantum nodes determines the hop distance and the probability of the existence of an entangled link in the network. Here, we define a decentralized routing for entangled quantum networks. The proposed method allows an efficient routing to find the shortest paths in entangled quantum networks by using only local knowledge of the quantum nodes. We give bounds on the maximum value of the total number of entangled links of a path. The proposed scheme can be directly applied in practical quantum communications and quantum networking scenarios.