Designing Scalable Quantum Network Architectures

Simulation-driven design is an essential tool in the development of quantum communication networks. In the past few years experimental quantum network demonstrations moved from table-top experiments to metropolitan-scale deployments and long-distance repeater network prototypes. As the number of optical components in these experiments increases, simulations simplify experiment planning and allow comparisons of alternative network architectures. In this work we use simulations to quantify the performance of networks with quantum router and repeater nodes. Our simulator of quantum network communication, called SeQUeNCe, performs simulations at the individual photon level with picosecond resolution. Faithful evaluations are achieved by modeling interactions between the physical layer, control protocols, and applications. We implement simplified models of optical components and the control protocol stack. End-to-end performance is evaluated for quantum key distribution and quantum state teleportation applications, and correctness of our models is partially validated by comparing against prior experimental results.