EntangleNet: Theoretical Reestablishment of Entanglement in Quantum Networks

In the practical context of quantum networks, the most reliable method of transmitting quantum information is via teleportation because quantum states are highly sensitive. However, teleportation consumes a shared maximally entangled state. Two parties Alice and Bob located at separate nodes that wish to reestablish their shared entanglement will not send entangled qubits directly to achieve this goal, but rather employ a more efficient mechanism that ensures minimal time resources. In this paper, we present a quantum routing scheme that exploits entanglement swapping to reestablish consumed entanglement. It improves and generalizes previous work on the subject and reduces the entanglement distribution time by a factor of 4k in an arbitrary scale quantum network, where N = 4k - 1 is a required number of quantum nodes located between source and destination. In addition, k is the greatest positive integer considered by Alice or Bob, such that afterwards they choose N quantum switches.