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Stephanie Wehner - Towards a blueprint for a quantum internet

Virtual Lecture

Lecture available on YouTube


Abstract:

Building the first large-scale quantum network is a highly challenging endeavor. Not only is it a highly contested question of what the most promising hardware platform might be, but even if we had selected one, it is unknown what the precise requirements for its realization would be.

In this talk, we will present a series of methods that can be used in order to determine minimal requirements of creating such a network on an existing fiber network infrastructure. We start by presenting an algorithm to perform a pre-selection of where quantum repeaters may be located on an existing fiber grid. We present a purpose built discrete event simulator that can be used to validate candidate architectures, and a matching machine learning method that can be used to determine minimal hardware (or software) requirements necessary to achieve a specific target functionality of the network. We provide several examples for illustration.

Biography:

Stephanie Wehner is Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor in quantum information at TU Delft and the Research Lead of the Quantum Internet Division. Her goal is to understand the world of small particles – the laws of quantum mechanics – in order to construct better networks and computers. For her work, Stephanie has received a KNAW Ammodo Award. Stephanie is one the founders of QCRYPT, which has become the largest conference in quantum cryptography. She presently leads the European Quantum Internet Alliance in the EU Flagship on Quantum Technologies. In a former life, she worked as a professional hacker in industry.

 

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