Experiences on Developing an on-Demand Entanglement Service Coexisting with Classical Traffic over a Q-LAN Testbed

Near-term quantum networks will require a framework for requesting the distribution of entanglement between remote parties. Centralized controllers that provide an interface to users, while orchestrating the functionalities of quantum devices and systems in the network have been proposed to achieve this goal. In this paper, we report our experiences on developing an on-demand entanglement service coexisting with classical traffic over a quantum local area network (Q-LAN) testbed. Our Q-LAN testbed is located at Argonne National Laboratory campus, and it is composed of deployed fiber optics links interconnect commercial quantum and classical networking equipment. We utilize an empirical model to determine the configuration parameters of a commercial entangled photon source (EPS), given the requested coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) and knowledge of the power levels of classical traffic on the network. We delineate our approach towards building an orchestrator based on this model and report our results attained up to this point. Future research aims to extend remote entanglement capabilities, improve timing synchronization, and enhance communications across multiple nodes, further advancing the practical deployment of quantum network technologies.