Entanglement-Based Artificial Topology: Neighboring Remote Network Nodes

Entanglement is unanimously recognized as the key communication resource of the Quantum Internet. Thus, the possibility of implementing unparalleled network functionalities by exploiting entanglement is gaining huge attention. However, the research efforts in this context are mainly focused on <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">bipartite entanglement</i>, often discarding the wide unexplored classes of entanglement shared among more than two parties, known as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">multipartite entanglement</i>. In this paper, we aim at exploiting multipartite entanglement as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">inter-network resource</i>. Specifically, we consider the interconnection of different Quantum Local Area Networks (QLANs), and we show that multipartite entanglement allows to dynamically generate an inter-QLAN <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">artificial</i> topology, by means of local operations only, that overcomes the limitations of the physical QLAN topologies. To this aim, we first design the multipartite entangled state to be distributed within each QLAN. Then, we show how such a state can be engineered to: i) interconnect nodes belonging to different QLANs, and ii) dynamically adapt to different inter-QLAN traffic demands. Our contribution aims at providing the network engineering community with a hands-on guideline towards the concept of artificial topology and artificial neighborhood.