Deterministic Generation of Light-Matter Entangled States for Realization of Quantum Repeaters

Quantum repeaters are vital ingredients for realization of long-distance quantum networks [1]. They can be realized by preparing nodes that can generate an entangled light-matter state, namely, a single photon entangled to a quantum memory. This allows for entangling two distant quantum memories, by propagating the single photons from each node to an intermediate place for Bell state measurements. A common approach for generating such entangled light-matter states is generating an entangled photon pair in a nonlinear source, and coupling one of the photons in the pair to a quantum memory for storage [2]. However, such an approach faces two main challenges: Photon-pair generation in nonlinear sources is a probabilistic process. Moreover, due to modal and spectral mismatches, coupling single photons from a nonlinear source to a quantum memory is generally not an efficient process. These make the successful generation of an entangled light-matter state highly probabilistic.