ReQuSim: Faithfully simulating near-term quantum repeaters

TL;DR

ReQuSim is a detailed simulation platform that models realistic quantum repeater setups, including noise and imperfections, enabling analysis of complex strategies for quantum communication over long distances.

Contribution

The paper introduces ReQuSim, a Monte-Carlo simulation tool that accurately models realistic quantum repeater protocols with noise and imperfections, surpassing previous analytic approaches.

Findings

Complex relationships between repeater strategies identified

Simulation demonstrates potential improvements with combined strategies

ReQuSim enables realistic performance assessment of quantum repeaters

Abstract

Quantum repeaters have long been established to be essential for distributing entanglement over long distances. Consequently, their experimental realization constitutes a core challenge of quantum communication. However, there are numerous open questions about implementation details for realistic, near-term experimental setups. In order to assess the performance of realistic repeater protocols, we here present ReQuSim, a comprehensive Monte-Carlo based simulation platform for quantum repeaters that faithfully includes loss and models a wide range of imperfections such as memories with time-dependent noise. Our platform allows us to perform an analysis for quantum repeater setups and strategies that go far beyond known analytic results: This refers to being able to both capture more realistic noise models and analyse more complex repeater strategies. We present a number of findings centered around the combination of strategies for improving performance, such as entanglement purification and the use of multiple repeater stations, and demonstrate that there exist complex relationships between them. We stress that numerical tools such as ours are essential to model complex quantum communication protocols aimed at contributing to the quantum internet.