Practical wavelength selection for quantum-augmented networks over shared optical fiber

Abstract:In a quantum augmented network, sharing optical fiber with classical traffic requires quantum wavelength selection to balance logical fidelity, block acceptance, and classical data reception. Here we develop a wavelength-selection framework for an error-corrected three-stage quantum communication protocol. Under a thermal-background model with independent errors, an ideal one-photon receiver, and ideal recovery, we derive an accepted qubit channel and a key-independent lower bound on logical entanglement fidelity. Combining this bound with block acceptance gives an entanglement-fidelity yield bound, which we maximize over evaluated wavelengths subject to fidelity and classical link-budget requirements. For the Steane [[7,1,3]] code at 5 km per traversal and -10 dBm per classical channel, the largest fidelity certificate occurs near 1537 nm, whereas the largest yield bound occurs near 1551 nm. Along the 1.25 Gb/s classical link budget with 0.2% base error, the optimized yield bound falls below 10^-6 near 10 km per traversal, while fidelity remains certified at 0.99 or higher at longer spans. These results distinguish fidelity and yield constraints and identify certified operating regions for quantum-augmented networks sharing optical fiber.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI)

arXiv:2610.20987 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2610.20987v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.20987 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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