Quantum repeater based on cavity QED evolutions and coherent light

摘要

In the framework of cavity QED, we propose a quantum repeater scheme that uses coherent light and chains of atoms coupled to optical cavities. In contrast to conventional repeater schemes, in our scheme there is no need for an explicit use of two-qubit quantum logical gates by exploiting solely the cavity QED evolution. In our previous work (Gonta and van Loock in Phys Rev A 88: 052308, 2013), we already proposed a quantum repeater in which the entanglement between two neighboring repeater nodes was distributed using controlled displacements of input coherent light, while the produced low-fidelity entangled pairs were purified using ancillary (four-partite) entangled states. In the present work, the entanglement distribution is realized using a sequence of controlled phase shifts and displacements of input coherent light. Compared to previous coherent-state-based distribution schemes for two-qubit entanglement, our scheme here relies only upon a simple discrimination of two coherent states with opposite signs, which can be performed in a quantum mechanically optimal fashion via a beam splitter and two on-off detectors. For the entanglement purification, we employ a method that avoids the use of extra entangled ancilla states. Our repeater scheme exhibits reasonable fidelities and repeater rates providing an attractive platform for long-distance quantum communication.