Overview

Quantum networks are envisioned to achieve novel capabilities that are provably impossible using classical networks. These novel capabilities range from cryptography, sensing and metrology, to distributed systems. As with classical networks, quantum networks must be large enough to facilitate a practical level of communication, information sharing, or collaboration, and the scaling of quantum networks to longer distances requires advanced quantum repeater (QR) technologies. Depending on the error mitigation mechanisms adopted to suppress loss and errors, QRs are typically classified into “memory-based” or “all-photonic” QRs. Each type of QR may be best suited for a specific type of underlying quantum technology, for a particular scale of quantum network, and for a specific regime of operational parameters.

Modeling and simulation of quantum repeaters and networks can help in understanding the relative performance and resource requirements of different types of QRs, tradeoffs of alternative quantum network architectures, optimizing quantum hardware, and developing a robust control plane. NetSquid is a software tool for the modeling and simulation of scalable quantum networks developed at QuTech. The ESnet quantum network research team, along with Economou’s research group, is developing a quantum repeater toolkit based on NetSquid to study advanced quantum repeaters and networks. As of this writing, this toolkit supports modeling and simulation of “memory-based” trapped ion quantum repeaters and networks, and “all-photonic” quantum repeaters and networks. You are welcome to use this toolkit for research and education purposes. We hope it is useful to you. If you do, please consider citing our work.

Using QNPack

Please visit Github for the QNPack software distribution and usage instructions.

Publications