Multicasting homogeneous and heterogeneous quantum states in quantum networks

In this paper, we target the practical implementation issues of quantum multicast networks. First, we design a recursive lossless compression that allows us to control the trade-off between the circuit complexity and the dimension of the compressed quantum state. We give a formula that describes the trade-off, and further analyze how the formula is affected by the controlling parameter of the recursive procedure. Our recursive lossless compression can be applied in a quantum multicast network where the source outputs homogeneous quantum states (many copies of a quantum state) to a set of destinations through a bottleneck. Such a recursive lossless compression is extremely useful in the current situation where the technology of producing large-scale quantum circuits is limited. Second, we develop two lossless compression schemes that work for heterogeneous quantum states (many copies of a set of quantum states) when the set of quantum states satisfies a certain structure. The heterogeneous compression schemes provide extra compressing power over the homogeneous compression scheme. Finally, we realize our heterogeneous compression schemes in several quantum multicast networks, including the single-source multi-terminal model, the multi-source multi-terminal model, and the ring networks. We then analyze the bandwidth requirements for these network models. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.