Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Elastic optical quantum networks: connecting two worlds

Presenting Author: Joseph Lukens, Oak Ridge National Lab

Lightwave technology has revolutionized networking, enabling a vast global infrastructure of high-speed communications that supports the internet today. Throughout this development, elastic or flex-grid optical networking has proven itself a powerful paradigm for maximizing utilization of optical resources via reconfigurable allocation of wavelength channels and bandwidths matched to user demand. In this talk, I will describe research expanding elastic optical networking to quantum networks as well. Through routing and provisioning of broadband photonic entanglement with wavelength-selective switches, quantum networks of ever-increasing size can be envisioned, as indicated by our proof-of-principle experiments demonstrating adaptive polarization entanglement distribution in a deployed quantum local area network. After discussing the integration of important practical capabilities into our testbed - including White Rabbit timing synchronization and quantum key distribution - I will conclude with recent efforts toward scaling to much larger networks, focusing on addressable ultrabroadband entanglement sources, genetic-algorithm-aided design, and Bayesian inference. As a bridge connecting highly successful classical optical networks to their more nascent quantum counterparts, elastic optical networking should continue to offer a valuable framework in which quantum networks can thrive and grow in both size and functionality.

(Session 6 : Friday from 8:30 am - 9:15 am)