An optimistic protocol for entanglement distribution

Shared remote entanglement is a resource for distributed quantum information processing tasks such as cryptography, networked clocks, high resolution interferometry and other applications of quantum technology. To establish remote entanglement one can start from smaller distances by directly charging a pair of quantum memories with an entangled state and then performing entanglement swapping between previously non-interacting memories. The effective rate of remote entanglement generation using this approach depends on probability that pairs of memories are successfully charged per attempt, the swapping success probability, lifetime of the quantum memories and cycle-time which is required for the classical control to check if two pairs of quantum memories are successfully charged. We propose a protocol for the classical controls that resets the quantum memories after a finite waiting-time window to mitigate the decoherence in imperfect quantum memories. We show that this protocol can yield up to a three-fold increase of distillable entanglement rates and determine the optimal size of the time window depending on the operating point in parameter space.