arXiv subjects

David Elkouss

Publications and source records attributed to David Elkouss.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Promise and Challenges of Distimation

Estimating the quality of raw entangled states and distilling high-fidelity entanglement traditionally require two separate link-layer protocols in a quantum network stack, each consuming its own share of fragile entangled pairs. The recently introduced distimation concept merges these two protocols by directly extracting state estimation data from the classical syndromes generated during entanglement distillation. By removing the dedicated "test-then-distill'' stage, distimation lowers the number of raw entangled pairs required to operate the network, reduces latency, and streamlines the network control plane. The paradigm is especially attractive for near-term hardware platforms, where entanglement generation remains a severe bottleneck. Alongside these promises, distimation introduces new engineering challenges, ranging from accurate local-device modeling to protocols for tracking time-varying sources. This article surveys the core principles of distimation, quantifies expected gains for realistic architectures, and outlines a research roadmap toward making distimation a standard building block in future quantum networks.

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arXiv2026

Fault-tolerant modular quantum computing with surface codes using single-shot emission-based hardware

Fault-tolerant modular quantum computing requires stabilizer measurements across the modules in a quantum network. For this, entangled states of high quality and rate must be distributed. Currently, two main types of entanglement distribution protocols exist, namely emission-based and scattering-based, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. On the one hand, scattering-based protocols with cavities or waveguides are fast but demand stringent hardware such as high-efficiency integrated circulators or strong waveguide coupling. On the other hand, emission-based platforms are experimentally feasible but so far rely on Bell-pair fusion with extensive use of slow two-qubit memory gates, limiting thresholds to $\approx 0.16\%$. Here, we consider a fully distributed surface code using emission-based entanglement schemes that generate GHZ states in a single shot, i.e., without the need for Bell-pair fusions. We show that our optical setup produces Bell pairs, W states, and GHZ states, enabling both memory-based and optical protocols for distilling high-fidelity GHZ states with significantly improved success rates. Furthermore, we introduce protocols that completely eliminate the need for memory-based two-qubit gates, achieving thresholds of $\approx 0.19\%$ with modest hardware enhancements, increasing to above $\approx 0.24\%$ with photon-number-resolving detectors. These results show the feasibility of emission-based architectures for scalable fault-tolerant operation.

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arXiv2025

Linear Program Witness for Network Nonlocality in Arbitrary Networks

Network nonlocality extends Bell nonlocality to settings with multiple independent sources and parties. Certifying it in quantum information processing tasks requires suitable witnesses. However, in contrast to local correlations, the set of network-local correlations is non-convex. This non-convexity makes certifying network nonlocality a highly non-trivial task. Existing approaches involve leveraging network-specific properties, or inflation-based methods whose constraints grow combinatorially in the number of local variables. In this work, we introduce a linear programming witness for network nonlocality built from five classes of linear constraints. These classes are network-agnostic, although the explicit forms of the constraints must be tailored to a specific network's structure. We use the procedure to construct network nonlocality witnesses for a family of ring networks and certify network nonlocality for a concrete example, relying only on observed probabilities and a tunable experimental parameter. Our work advances the search for efficient witnesses to certify network nonlocality across diverse quantum network architectures.

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arXiv2025

Hybrid Quantum Repeater Chains with Atom-based Quantum Processing Units and Quantum Memory Multiplexers

Quantum repeaters enable the generation of reliable entanglement across long distances despite the underlying channel noise. Nevertheless, realizing quantum repeaters poses a difficult engineering challenge due to various device constraints and design tradeoffs. Herein, we propose and analyze an efficient hybrid quantum repeater design that integrates atom-based quantum processing units, spontaneous parametric down-conversion photon sources, and atomic frequency comb quantum memories. Our design leverages the strong spectro-temporal multiplexing capability of the quantum memory to enable high-rate elementary-link entanglement generation between repeater nodes. Transferring the photonic entanglement into matter-qubit entanglement, together with deterministic quantum operations, further enables reliable long-distance entanglement distribution. We analyze photon-loss channels in the hybrid architecture and propose suitable error-suppression strategies that are natively incorporated into our repeater protocol. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate the advantages of our hybrid design for end-to-end secret key rates in a linear repeater-chain model. With continued advances in relevant hardware technologies, we envision that the proposed hybrid design is well-suited for large-scale quantum networks.

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arXiv2025

Modular Architectures and Entanglement Schemes for Error-Corrected Distributed Quantum Computation

Connecting multiple smaller qubit modules by generating high-fidelity entangled states is a promising path for scaling quantum computing hardware. The performance of such a modular quantum computer is highly dependent on the quality and rate of entanglement generation. However, the optimal architectures and entanglement generation schemes are not yet established. Focusing on modular quantum computers with solid-state quantum hardware, we investigate a distributed surface code's error-correcting threshold and logical failure rate. We consider both emission-based and scattering-based entanglement generation schemes for the measurement of non-local stabilizers. Through quantum optical modeling, we link the performance of the quantum error correction code to the parameters of the underlying physical hardware and identify the necessary parameter regime for fault-tolerant modular quantum computation. In addition, we compare modular architectures with one or two data qubits per module. We find that the performance of the code depends significantly on the choice of entanglement generation scheme, while the two modular architectures have similar error-correcting thresholds. For some schemes, thresholds nearing the thresholds of non-distributed implementations ($\sim0.4 \%$) appear feasible with future parameters.

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arXiv2025

Efficient graph-diagonal characterization of noisy states distributed over quantum networks via Bell sampling

Graph states are an important class of entangled states that serve as a key resource for distributed information processing and communication in quantum networks. In this work, we propose a protocol that utilizes a Bell sampling subroutine to characterize the diagonal elements in the graph basis of noisy graph states distributed across a network. Our approach offers significant advantages over direct diagonal estimation using unentangled single-qubit measurements in terms of scalability. Specifically, we prove that estimating the full vector of diagonal elements requires a sample complexity that scales linearly with the number of qubits ($\mathcal{O}(n)$), providing an exponential reduction in resource overhead compared to the best known $\mathcal{O}(2^n)$ scaling of direct estimation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that global properties, such as state fidelity, can be estimated with a sample complexity independent of the network size. Finally, we present numerical results indicating that the estimation in practice is more efficient than the derived theoretical bounds. Our work thus establishes a promising technique for efficiently estimating noisy graph states in large networks under realistic experimental conditions.

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arXiv2025

Estimating Bell Diagonal states with separable measurements

Quantum network protocols depend on the availability of shared entanglement. Given that entanglement generation and distribution are affected by noise, characterization of the shared entangled states is essential to bound the errors of the protocols. This work analyzes the estimation of Bell diagonal states within quantum networks, where operations are limited to local actions and classical communication. We demonstrate the advantages of Bayesian mean estimation over direct inversion and maximum-likelihood estimation, providing analytical expressions for estimation risk and supporting our findings with numerical simulations.

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arXiv2025

Properties of computational entanglement measures

Quantum entanglement is a useful resource for implementing communication tasks. However, for the resource to be useful in practice, it needs to be accessible by parties with bounded computational resources. Computational entanglement measures quantify the usefulness of entanglement in the presence of limited computational resources. In this paper, we analyze systematically some basic properties of two recently introduced computational entanglement measures, the computational distillable entanglement and entanglement cost. To do so, we introduce lower bound and upper bound extensions of basic properties to address the case when entanglement measures are not defined by a scalar value but when only lower or upper function bounds are available. In particular, we investigate the lower bound convexity and upper bound concavity properties of such measures, and the upper and lower bound additivity with respect to the tensor product. We also observe that these measures are not invariant with local unitaries, although invariance is recovered for efficient unitaries. As a consequence, we obtain that these measures are only LOCC monotones under efficient families of LOCC channels. Our analysis covers both the one-shot scenario and the uniform setting, with properties established for the former naturally extending to the latter.

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arXiv2025

Performance of Practical Quantum Oblivious Key Distribution

Motivated by the applications of secure multiparty computation as a privacy-protecting data analysis tool, and identifying oblivious transfer as one of its main practical enablers, we propose a practical realization of randomized quantum oblivious transfer. By using only symmetric cryptography primitives to implement commitments, we construct computationally-secure randomized oblivious transfer without the need for public-key cryptography or assumptions imposing limitations on the adversarial devices. We show that the protocol is secure under an indistinguishability-based notion of security and demonstrate an experimental implementation to test its real-world performance. Its security and performance are then compared to both quantum and classical alternatives, showing potential advantages over existing solutions based on the noisy storage model and public-key cryptography.

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arXiv2025

Far from Perfect: Quantum Error Correction with (Hyperinvariant) Evenbly Codes

We introduce a new class of qubit codes that we call Evenbly codes, building on a previous proposal of hyperinvariant tensor networks. Its tensor network description consists of local, non-perfect tensors describing CSS codes interspersed with Hadamard gates, placed on a hyperbolic $\{p,q\}$ geometry with even $q\geq 4$, yielding an infinitely large class of subsystem codes. We construct an example for a $\{5,4\}$ manifold and describe strategies of logical gauge fixing that lead to different rates $k/n$ and distances $d$, which we calculate analytically, finding distances which range from $d=2$ to $d \sim n^{2/3}$. Investigating threshold performance under erasure, depolarizing, and pure Pauli noise channels, we find that the code exhibits a depolarizing noise threshold of about 19.1% in the code-capacity model and 50% for pure Pauli and erasure channels under suitable gauges. We also test a constant-rate version with $k/n = 0.125$, finding excellent error resilience (about 40%) under the erasure channel. Recovery rates for these and other settings are studied both under an optimal decoder as well as a more efficient but non-optimal greedy decoder. We also consider generalizations beyond the CSS tensor construction, compute error rates and thresholds for other hyperbolic geometries, and discuss the relationship to holographic bulk/boundary dualities. Our work indicates that Evenbly codes may show promise for practical quantum computing applications.

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arXiv2025

Efficient Reconciliation of Continuous Variable Quantum Key Distribution with Multiplicatively Repeated Non-Binary LDPC Codes

Continuous variable quantum key distribution bears the promise of simple quantum key distribution directly compatible with commercial off the shelf equipment. However, for a long time its performance was hindered by the absence of good classical postprocessing capable of distilling secret-keys in the noisy regime. Advanced coding solutions in the past years have partially addressed this problem enabling record transmission distances of up to 165 km, and 206 km over ultra-low loss fiber. In this paper, we show that a very simple coding solution with a single code is sufficient to extract keys at all noise levels. This solution has performance competitive with prior results for all levels of noise, and we show that non-zero keys can be distilled up to a record distance of 192 km assuming the standard loss of a single-mode optical fiber, and 240 km over ultra-low loss fibers. Low-rate codes are constructed using multiplicatively repeated non-binary low-density parity-check codes over a finite field of characteristic two. This construction only makes use of a (2,k)-regular non-binary low-density parity-check code as mother code, such that code design is in fact not required, thus trivializing the code construction procedure. The construction is also inherently rate-adaptive thereby allowing to easily create codes of any rate. Rate-adaptive codes are of special interest for the efficient reconciliation of errors over time or arbitrary varying channels, as is the case with quantum key distribution. In short, these codes are highly efficient when reconciling errors over a very noisy communication channel, and perform well even for short block-length codes. Finally, the proposed solution is known to be easily amenable to hardware implementations, thus addressing also the requirements for practical reconciliation in continuous variable quantum key distribution.

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arXiv2025

A double selection entanglement distillation-based state estimator

With the advent of practical quantum communication networks drawing closer, there is a growing need for reliable estimation protocols that can efficiently characterize quantum resources with minimum resource overhead requirement. A novel approach to this problem is to integrate an estimator into an existing network task, thereby removing the need for an additional characterization protocol. In this work, we show that the measurement statistics of a double selection distillation protocol alone can be used to efficiently estimate the Bell-diagonal parameters of the undistilled states, as well as the resulting distilled states after additional post-processing. We also demonstrate that this novel estimator outperforms the previously proposed distillation-based estimator in terms of resource complexity.

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arXiv2025

Fault-tolerant structures for measurement-based quantum computation on a network

In this work, we introduce a method to construct fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) architectures and numerically estimate their performance over various types of networks. A possible application of such a paradigm is distributed quantum computation, where separate computing nodes work together on a fault-tolerant computation through entanglement. We gauge error thresholds of the architectures with an efficient stabilizer simulator to investigate the resilience against both circuit-level and network noise. We show that, for both monolithic (i.e., non-distributed) and distributed implementations, an architecture based on the diamond lattice may outperform the conventional cubic lattice. Moreover, the high erasure thresholds of non-cubic lattices may be exploited further in a distributed context, as their performance may be boosted through entanglement distillation by trading in entanglement success rates against erasure errors during the error-decoding process. These results highlight the significance of lattice geometry in the design of fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computing on a network, emphasizing the potential for constructing robust and scalable distributed quantum computers.

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arXiv2025

A finite sufficient set of conditions for catalytic majorization

The majorization relation has found numerous applications in mathematics, quantum information and resource theory, and quantum thermodynamics, where it describes the allowable transitions between two physical states. In many cases, when state vector $x$ does not majorize state vector $y$, it is nevertheless possible to find a catalyst - another vector $z$ such that $x \otimes z$ majorizes $y \otimes z$. Determining the feasibility of such catalytic transformation typically involves checking an infinite set of inequalities. Here, we derive a finite sufficient set of inequalities that imply catalysis. Extending this framework to thermodynamics, we also establish a finite set of sufficient conditions for catalytic state transformations under thermal operations. For novel examples, we provide a software toolbox implementing these conditions.

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arXiv2025

Enhancing Quantum Key Distribution with Entanglement Distillation and Classical Advantage Distillation

Realizing secure communication between distant parties is one of quantum technology's main goals. Although quantum key distribution promises information-theoretic security for sharing a secret key, the key rate heavily depends on the level of noise in the quantum channel. To overcome the noise, both quantum and classical techniques exist, i.e., entanglement distillation and classical advantage distillation. So far, these techniques have only been used separately from each other. Herein, we present a two-stage distillation scheme concatenating entanglement distillation with classical advantage distillation. For advantage distillation, we utilize a fixed protocol, specifically, the repetition code; in the case of entanglement distillation, we employ an enumeration algorithm to find the optimal protocol. We test our scheme for different noisy entangled states and demonstrate its quantitative advantage: our two-stage distillation scheme achieves finite key rates even in the high-noise regime where entanglement distillation or advantage distillation alone cannot afford key sharing. We also calculate the security bounds for relevant QKD protocols with our key distillation scheme and show that they exceed the previous security bounds with only advantage distillation. Since the advantage distillation part does not introduce further requirements on quantum resources, the proposed scheme is well-suited for near-term quantum key distribution tasks.

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arXiv2025

Bayesian Optimization for Repeater Protocols

Efficiently distributing secret keys over long distances remains a critical challenge in the development of quantum networks. "First-generation" quantum repeater chains distribute entanglement by executing protocols composed of probabilistic entanglement generation, swapping and distillation operations. However, finding the protocol that maximizes the secret-key rate is difficult for two reasons. First, calculating the secretkey rate for a given protocol is non-trivial due to experimental imperfections and the probabilistic nature of the operations. Second, the protocol space rapidly grows with the number of nodes, and lacks any clear structure for efficient exploration. To address the first challenge, we build upon the efficient machinery developed by Li et al. [1] and we extend it, enabling numerical calculation of the secret-key rate for heterogeneous repeater chains with an arbitrary number of nodes. For navigating the large, unstructured space of repeater protocols, we implement a Bayesian optimization algorithm, which we find consistently returns the optimal result. Whenever comparisons are feasible, we validate its accuracy against results obtained through brute-force methods. Further, we use our framework to extract insight on how to maximize the efficiency of repeater protocols across varying node configurations and hardware conditions. Our results highlight the effectiveness of Bayesian optimization in exploring the potential of near-term quantum repeater chains.

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arXiv2024

Pseudo-Entanglement is Necessary for EFI Pairs

Regarding minimal assumptions, most of classical cryptography is known to depend on the existence of One-Way Functions (OWFs). However, recent evidence has shown that this is not the case when considering quantum resources. Besides the well known unconditional security of Quantum Key Distribution, it is now known that computational cryptography may be built on weaker primitives than OWFs, e.g., pseudo-random states [JLS18], one-way state generators [MY23], or EFI pairs of states [BCQ23]. We consider a new quantum resource, pseudo-entanglement, and show that the existence of EFI pairs, one of the current main candidates for the weakest computational assumption for cryptography (necessary for commitments, oblivious transfer, secure multi-party computation, computational zero-knowledge proofs), implies the existence of pseudo-entanglement, as defined by [ABF+24, ABV23] under some reasonable adaptations. We prove this by constructing a new family of pseudo-entangled quantum states given only EFI pairs. Our result has important implications for the field of computational cryptography. It shows that if pseudo-entanglement does not exist, then most of cryptography cannot exist either. Moreover, it establishes pseudo-entanglement as a new minimal assumption for most of computational cryptography, which may pave the way for the unification of other assumptions into a single primitive. Finally, pseudo-entanglement connects physical phenomena and efficient computation, thus, our result strengthens the connection between cryptography and the physical world.

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arXiv2024

Disti-Mator: an entanglement distillation-based state estimator

Minimizing both experimental effort and consumption of valuable quantum resources in state estimation is vital in practical quantum information processing. Here, we explore characterizing states as an additional benefit of the entanglement distillation protocols. We show that the Bell-diagonal parameters of any undistilled state can be efficiently estimated solely from the measurement statistics of probabilistic distillation protocols. We further introduce the state estimator `Disti-Mator' designed specifically for a realistic experimental setting, and exhibit its robustness through numerical simulations. Our results demonstrate that a separate estimation protocol can be circumvented whenever distillation is an indispensable communication-based task.

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