Quantum Internet: from Medium Access Control to Entanglement Access Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel entanglement access control protocol for the Quantum Internet that enables distributed extraction of EPR pairs, node identity determination, and node anonymity without relying on classical signaling.

Contribution

It presents a new protocol for multipartite entanglement access control that enhances network performance and preserves node anonymity in quantum networks.

Findings

Protocol successfully extracts EPR pairs from multipartite states.

Node identities are clearly determined during entanglement access.

The protocol maintains node anonymity while minimizing classical communication.

Abstract

Multipartite entanglement plays a crucial role for the design of the Quantum Internet, due to its potentiality of significantly increasing the network performance. In this paper, we design an entanglement access control protocol for multipartite state, which exhibits several attractive features. Specifically, the designed protocol is able to jointly extract in a distributed way an EPR pair from the original multipartite entangled state shared by the set of network nodes, and to univocally determines the identities of the transmitter node and the receiver node in charge of using the extracted EPR pair. Furthermore, the protocol avoids to delegate the signaling arising with entanglement access control to the classical network, with the exception of the unavoidable classical communications needed for EPR extraction and qubit teleportation. Finally, the protocol supports the anonymity of the entanglement accessing nodes.