Aggregating quantum repeaters for the quantum internet

Abstract

The quantum internet holds promise for performing quantum communication, such as quantum teleportation and quantum key distribution, freely between any parties all over the globe. For such a quantum internet protocol, a general fundamental upper bound on the performance has been derived [K. Azuma, A. Mizutani, and H.-K. Lo, arXiv:1601.02933]. Here we consider its converse problem. In particular, we present a protocol constructible from any given quantum network, which is based on running quantum repeater schemes in parallel over the network. The performance of this protocol and the upper bound restrict the quantum capacity and the private capacity over the network from both sides. The optimality of the protocol is related to fundamental problems such as additivity questions for quantum channels and questions on the existence of a gap between quantum and private capacities.