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Thomas R. Beauchamp

Publications and source records attributed to Thomas R. Beauchamp.

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Tools for Reducing Service Time in Near-Term Quantum Networks

Architectures have been proposed to control entanglement generation in multi-user quantum networks. To allow time for local operations and classical communication at end nodes, these architectures insert fixed separations between consecutive batches of entanglement generation attempts. This reduces network utilization when attempts fail, leaving the network idle during the scheduled separation. To address this limitation, we propose a novel method to reclaim this idle time by shortening the scheduled separation between attempts while respecting hardware constraints. The method uses an analytical execution model to optimize the separation and reduce the total network service time of an application. Evaluations within the Arqon architecture show network service time reductions of up to 42 minutes (7.6%) for single applications and 16-29 minutes (26-30%) per application when co-scheduled. The approach applies broadly to quantum network architectures that share hardware between entanglement generation and local operations, and the method can be used online by network schedulers.

quant-ph

Arqon: A suite of control applications enabling a reliable quantum network

A quantum network's purpose is to enable users to execute applications on end nodes. This requires the network to provide the service of creating entangled links between those nodes. Users of mature networks, such as the internet or the telephone network expect accepted service demands to be met reliably. We first define reliability requirements that extend classical computer network concepts to quantum network service delivery. We then introduce Arqon, a suite of control applications designed to deliver reliable service in centrally controlled quantum networks. We demonstrate through both analytic and numerical evaluation that Arqon satisfies all reliability requirements for accepted demands. These evaluations consider static network topologies. We provide a complete Python implementation and perform complexity analysis showing that admission control scales as $O(k^3)$ in the number of incoming demands $k$ and schedule computation scales as ${O(N^3)}$ in the number of accepted demands to schedule $N$.

quant-ph

White Paper on Quantum Internet Computer Science Research Challenges

The aim of a quantum network is to enable the generation of end-to-end entangled links between end nodes of the network, so that they can execute quantum network applications. To facilitate this, it is desirable to have robust control of the network in order to be able to provide a reliable service to the end nodes. In recent work arXiv:2503.12582, we proposed a modular control architecture for a generate-when-request type network. This control architecture enables quantum network applications to be executed on end nodes running a modern operating system such as QNodeOS arXiv:2407.18306. In that work, we performed an evaluation of our architecture based on a proof-of-concept implementation. In the course of performing this evaluation, we discovered many outstanding questions and challenges. These relate not only to implementing our specific control architecture, but also to the design of any quantum network control architecture. Here, we describe some outstanding questions and challenges, discuss possible solutions, and identify where existing protocols require adaptation or new protocols must be designed.

quant-ph

A Modular Quantum Network Architecture for Integrating Network Scheduling with Local Program Execution

We propose an architecture for scheduling network operations enabling the end-to-end generation of entanglement according to user demand. The main challenge solved by this architecture is to allow for the integration of a network schedule with the execution of quantum programs running on processing end nodes in order to realise quantum network applications. A key element of this architecture is the definition of an entanglement packet to meet application requirements on near-term quantum networks where the lifetimes of the qubits stored at the end nodes are limited. Our architecture is fully modular and hardware agnostic, and defines a framework for further research on specific components that can now be developed independently of each other. In order to evaluate our architecture, we realise a proof of concept implementation on a simulated 6-node network in a star topology. We show our architecture facilitates the execution of quantum network applications, and that robust admission control is required to maintain quality of service. Finally, we comment on potential bottlenecks in our architecture and provide suggestions for future improvements.

quant-ph