Characterizing Channel Loss Within Quantum Networks

With recent advancements in quantum information science, the first quantum network testbeds have already been developed. Due to the numerous applications across a wide range of scientific disciplines associated with distributing quantum information, improving these testbeds to support large-scale quantum networks is of top priority. Quantum Network Tomography (QNT) utilizes end-to-end user measurements in order to characterize errors within these networks- an essential step in developing full-scale quantum networks. Previous work in QNT focused around developing models to infer depolarizing- and Pauli-noise within quantum network channels. This work addresses erasure errors such as loss to quantum network channels. We aim to expand upon previous work by introducing a general loss tomography protocol into the QNT framework that can be expanded to n-node star topologies, with the goal of applying it to testbeds and larger network topologies. This provides developers with network characterization capabilities that are required for the informed design and implementation of full-scale quantum networks in the future.