How efficient is transport of quantum cargo through multiple highways?

Abstract

Quantum states can be efficiently transferred over a long distance if the entire quantum channel can be divided into several small blocks. We consider a scenario in which each block consists of two copies of a multiparty state -- one is used for distributing an arbitrary quantum state to multiple parties while the other channel is required to concentrate it back to a single party. Both in noiseless and local noisy scenarios, we find one-shot quantum capacities of these channels in terms of fidelity, when the initial shared states in each block are the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and the generalized W states. We also consider a situation where optimal local measurements transform multipartite states to bipartite ones which can then be used as single-path channels for quantum state transmission in each segment. We show that in some parameter ranges, the former protocol provides strictly better fidelities than that of the latter, thereby establishing the importance of distributing and concentrating arbitrary quantum states via multipartite entangled states in long distance quantum communication, over the local measurement based protocol. Moreover, we show that in presence of bit flip or bit-phase flip noise, shared generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states possess an inherent noise detection and correction mechanism, leading to the same fidelity as in the noiseless case. We consider further noise models also, which do not enjoy the same mechanism. In addition to the fidelity based advantages, the multipath scheme is shown to be useful when one considers a situation in which the completion of the teleportation needs to be delayed. We also find the efficiencies of a quantum channel when a quantum state is transferred over long distances and the entire channel is divided into several small blocks.