Practical limitations on robustness and scalability of quantum Internet

TL;DR

This paper examines the fundamental and practical challenges limiting the scalability and robustness of quantum Internet, analyzing network constraints and proposing graph-theoretic methods for assessing and improving quantum network performance.

Contribution

It introduces graph-theoretic quantifiers to evaluate quantum network robustness and discusses practical bottlenecks and algorithms for quantum network tasks, highlighting limitations on quantum communication.

Findings

Identifies key bottlenecks in quantum network scalability and robustness.

Provides critical values for communication lines in quantum networks.

Proposes algorithms for network construction, pathfinding, and resource optimization.

Abstract

As quantum theory allows for information processing and computing tasks that otherwise are not possible with classical systems, there is a need and use of quantum Internet beyond existing network systems. At the same time, the realization of a desirably functional quantum Internet is hindered by fundamental and practical challenges such as high loss during transmission of quantum systems, decoherence due to interaction with the environment, fragility of quantum states, etc. We study the implications of these constraints by analyzing the limitations on the scaling and robustness of quantum Internet. Considering quantum networks, we present practical bottlenecks for secure communication, delegated computing, and resource distribution among end nodes. Motivated by the power of abstraction in graph theory (in association with quantum information theory), we consider graph-theoretic quantifiers to assess network robustness and provide critical values of communication lines for viable communication over quantum Internet. In particular, we begin by discussing limitations on usefulness of isotropic states as device-independent quantum key repeaters which otherwise could be useful for device-independent quantum key distribution. We consider some quantum networks of practical interest, ranging from satellite-based networks connecting far-off spatial locations to currently available quantum processor architectures within computers, and analyze their robustness to perform quantum information processing tasks. Some of these tasks form primitives for delegated quantum computing, e.g., entanglement distribution and quantum teleportation. For some examples of quantum networks, we present algorithms to perform different quantum network tasks of interest such as constructing the network structure, finding the shortest path between a pair of end nodes, and optimizing the flow of resources at a node.