Abstract
Quantum information processing is at the cusp of having significant impacts on technology and society in the form of providing unbreakable security, ultra-high-precision distributed sensing with applications to metrology and science discovery (e.g., LIGO), much higher-rate deep space optical communications than possible with conventional systems, and polynomial speeds up on graphical search with implications to big data. Most of these applications are enabled by high-rate distributed shared entanglement between pairs and groups of users. A critical missing component that prevents crossing this threshold is a distributed infrastructure in the form of a world-wide "Quantum Internet" to enable this. This motivates our study of quantum networks, namely what the right architecture is and how to operate it, i.e., route multiple quantum information flows, and allocate resources fairly and dynamically.
In this talk we review a specific quantum network architecture and present opportunities and challenges related to resource sharing among multiple parties of users. In particular, we focus on the determination of the capacity region associated with a particular network, i.e., characterize the vector of user entanglement rates that can be supported by the network. Throughout the talk we will focus on issues related to resource allocation based on global/local state information and the benefits of path diversity.