PhD Dissertation Proposal: Prateek Mantri, Large-Scale Quantum Networks: Architecture and Performance
Content
Speaker:
Prateek Mantri
Abstract:
This thesis investigates architectural principles for large-scale quantum networks across three settings: terrestrial repeater chains, satellite-assisted global backbones, and quantum data-center interconnects. The objective is to understand how physical-layer constraints, protocol design, and network topology jointly determine end-to-end performance in realistic, resource-rich regimes.
The first part studies one-way and two-way quantum repeater architectures under memory-abundant and pipelined operation. It introduces a multiplexed two-way architecture and shows that, in this regime, two-way repeaters can outperform one-way schemes in parameter regions previously believed to favor one-way operation. Distillation placement and swapping organization are formulated as a scheduling problem, and the exponential space of distillation sequences is shown to collapse to a structured and tractable subset under multiplexed execution. The work also evaluates adaptive encoded two-way repeaters in connection-less settings, demonstrating that syndrome-informed, on-the-fly code concatenation can outperform static encoding strategies in specific regimes.
The second part studies satellite-assisted quantum networking for global connectivity. It develops anisotropic ground-station lattice designs matched to orbital access patterns and evaluates their performance under realistic low-Earth-orbit constellations. The analysis identifies parameter regimes governing connectivity, throughput, and concurrency, and characterizes conditions under which sustained global entanglement distribution is feasible with near-term hardware.
The third part investigates quantum data-center interconnects tailored to Pauli-based and measurement-driven computation. It evaluates network topologies shaped by entanglement distribution and remote operations, and compares quantum-native designs against classical-inspired architectures. The goal is to identify structural and performance regimes in which quantum-specific interconnects provide advantages for distributed fault-tolerant computation.
Advisor:
Don Towsley