Experimental demonstration of entanglement delivery using a quantum network link layer

By sharing entangled states over global distances, the future Quantum Internet will unlock new possibilities in secure communication, distributed quantum computation and metrology. Fundamental primitives for entanglement-based quantum networks have been demonstrated on several physical platforms. However, it remains an outstanding challenge moving past physics experiments and delivering entanglement as a service.

 

Here, by implementing a recently proposed link layer protocol for quantum networks [1], we abstract the generation of entangled states between two physically separated diamond qubits into a robust and platform-independent quantum network service. An application can request entangled states to the link layer and then provide local operations to be performed on the entangled qubits in real-time. Using the link layer, we perform full state tomography of the generated states and remote state preparation — a building block for blind quantum computation — as well as measuring latency and throughput of the service.

The results we present will be the basis to develop, test and benchmark higher layers of the quantum network stack.

[1] Dahlberg et al. “A link layer protocol for quantum networks.” Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication. 2019. 159-173.