Resource sharing in a multi-user quantum network

As fiber-based quantum communication experiments evolve from table top demonstrations within a lab to demonstrations over local area and metropolitan area networks, technologies are being developed to realize a practical quantum network. An important aspect of practical quantum networks is to enable multiple users to request and consume quantum resources simultaneously and even share the infrastructure with classical signals. In this talk, we will present our research on resource sharing approaches to accommodate multiple users in a quantum network. One such approach is to interleave user access to the network in which the user requests are interleaved in a short enough timespan such that the requests do not incur noticeable delays as opposed to a sequential approach in which if two (almost simultaneously arriving) requests need time t on the network, then one must wait time t to start. We will present the results of our study that includes the above-mentioned (and possibly other) approach(es) on a simple local-area quantum network with a three-channel entangled photon source, two SNSPDs, and a four-channel time tagger.