Hybrid Quantum Repeater Chains with Atom-based Quantum Processing Units and Quantum Memory Multiplexers

Abstract:Quantum repeaters enable the generation of reliable entanglement across long distances despite the underlying channel noise. Nevertheless, realizing quantum repeaters poses a difficult engineering challenge due to various device constraints and design tradeoffs. Herein we propose and analyze an efficient hybrid quantum repeater design that integrates atom-based quantum processing units, spontaneous parametric down-conversion photon sources, and atomic frequency comb quantum memories. Our design leverages the strong spectrotemporal multiplexing capability of the quantum memory to enable high-rate elementary-link entanglement generation between repeater nodes. Transferring the photonic entanglement into matter-qubit entanglement, together with deterministic quantum operations, further enables reliable long-distance entanglement distribution. We analyze photon-loss channels in the hybrid architecture and propose suitable error-suppression strategies that are natively incorporated into our repeater protocol. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate the advantages of our hybrid design for end-to-end secret key rates in a linear repeater-chain model. With continued advances in relevant hardware technologies, we envision that the proposed hybrid design is well suited for large-scale quantum networks.

arXiv:2512.21655 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2512.21655v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.21655 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

https://doi.org/10.1103/y9tp-zg34 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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