Scaling Quantum Networks: Inter-QLANs Artificial Connectivity

The Quantum Internet is envisioned, at its final stage, to globally interconnect heterogeneous quantum networks. And this interconnection relays on entangled states shared among several quantum networks. In this paper, we take a step towards the engineering of entanglement as a inter-network resource. Specifically, we consider the interconnection of Quantum Local Area Networks (QLANs), and we show how to dynamically generate inter-QLAN artificial connectivity by means of local operations only. 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 for obtaining artificial links between different QLANs nodes. By leveraging the properties of a particular class of multipartite entangled states, namely, graph states, our results dynamically adapt the artificial connectivity to the network traffic patterns. Our proposal is preliminary towards scaling the interconnection of quantum networks.