A Feasible Quantum Sealed-Bid Auction Scheme Without an Auctioneer

In this article, we first define a primitive problem of secure multiparty computations, i.e., secure multiparty disjunction (SMD), and present a novel quantum protocol for SMD that can ensure information-theoretical security, i.e., unconditional security. Furthermore, based on the quantum SMD protocol, we design a quantum sealed-bid auction (QSA) scheme without an auctioneer. In the proposed […]

A Connection-Oriented Entanglement Distribution Design in Quantum Networks

Quantum networks create a completely new way for communication, and the most important function of a quantum network is to generate long-distance quantum entanglement to serve a number of quantum applications. As the scale of the network expands, in order to establish end-to-end entanglement between two remote nodes, entangled pairs need to be generated and […]

A Connection-Oriented Entanglement Distribution Design in Quantum Networks

Quantum networks create a completely new way for communication, and the most important function of a quantum network is to generate long-distance quantum entanglement to serve a number of quantum applications. As the scale of the network expands, in order to establish end-to-end entanglement between two remote nodes, entangled pairs need to be generated and […]

Protocols for Packet Quantum Network Intercommunication

A quantum network, which involves multiple parties pinging each other with quantum messages, could revolutionize communication, computing, and basic sciences. The future internet will be a global system of various packet switching quantum and classical networks, and we call it quantum internet . To build a quantum Internet, unified protocols that support the distribution of […]

Efficient Optimization of Cutoffs in Quantum Repeater Chains

Quantum communication enables the implementation of tasks that are unachievable with classical resources. However, losses on the communication channel preclude the direct long-distance transmission of quantum information in many relevant scenarios. In principle, quantum repeaters allow one to overcome losses. However, realistic hardware parameters make long-distance quantum communication a challenge in practice. For instance, in […]

QuNetSim: A Software Framework for Quantum Networks

As quantum network technologies develop, the need for teaching and engineering tools such as simulators and emulators rises. QuNetSim addresses this need. QuNetSim is a Python software framework that delivers an easy-to-use interface for simulating quantum networks at the network layer, which can be extended at little effort of the user to implement the corresponding […]

Single-Qubit Fidelity Assessment of Quantum Annealing Hardware

As a wide variety of quantum computing platforms become available, methods for assessing and comparing the performance of these devices are of increasing interest and importance. Inspired by the success of single-qubit error rate computations for tracking the progress of gate-based quantum computers, this work proposes a quantum annealing single-qubit assessment (QASA) protocol for quantifying […]

Enhanced Uplink Quantum Communication With Satellites via Downlink Channels

In developing the global quantum Internet, quantum communication with low-earth-orbit satellites will play a pivotal role. Such communication will need to be two way: effective not only in the satellite-to-ground (downlink) channel but also in the ground-to-satellite channel (uplink). Given that losses on this latter channel are significantly larger relative to the former, techniques that […]

Benchmarking Quantum Coprocessors in an Application-Centric, Hardware-Agnostic, and Scalable Way

Existing protocols for benchmarking current quantum coprocessors fail to meet the usual standards for assessing the performance of high-performance-computing platforms. After a synthetic review of these protocols—whether at the gate, circuit, or application level—we introduce a new benchmark, dubbed Atos Q-score, which is application-centric, hardware-agnostic, and scalable to quantum advantage processor sizes and beyond. The […]

Quantum Approximate Optimization With Parallelizable Gates

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) has been introduced as a heuristic digital quantum computing scheme to find approximate solutions of combinatorial optimization problems. We present a scheme to parallelize this approach for arbitrary all-to-all connected problem graphs in a layout of quantum bits (qubits) with nearest-neighbor interactions. The protocol consists of single qubit operations […]