Tools for Reducing Service Time in Near-Term Quantum Networks

Abstract

Architectures have been proposed to control entanglement generation in multi-user quantum networks. To allow time for local operations and classical communication at end nodes, these architectures insert fixed separations between consecutive batches of entanglement generation attempts. This reduces network utilization when attempts fail, leaving the network idle during the scheduled separation. To address this limitation, we propose a novel method to reclaim this idle time by shortening the scheduled separation between attempts while respecting hardware constraints. The method uses an analytical execution model to optimize the separation and reduce the total network service time of an application. Evaluations within the Arqon architecture show network service time reductions of up to 42 minutes (7.6%) for single applications and 16-29 minutes (26-30%) per application when co-scheduled. The approach applies broadly to quantum network architectures that share hardware between entanglement generation and local operations, and the method can be used online by network schedulers.

Accepted for publication at IEEE Quantum Week 2026. 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables