# Asynchronous Entanglement Routing for the Quantum Internet

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14300 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14300/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 21 Dec 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Robust Belief-State Policy Learning for Quantum Network Routing Under Decoherence and Time-Varying Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08654/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the emergence of the Quantum Internet, the need for advanced quantum networking techniques has significantly risen. Various models of quantum repeaters have been presented, each delineating a unique strategy to ensure quantum communication over long distances. We focus on repeaters that employ entanglement generation and swapping. This revolves around establishing remote end-to-end entanglement through repeaters, a concept we denote as the "quantum-native" repeaters (also called "first-generation" repeaters in some literature). The challenges in routing with quantum-native repeaters arise from probabilistic entanglement generation and restricted coherence time. Current approaches use synchronized time slots to search for entanglement-swapping paths, resulting in inefficiencies. Here, we propose a new set of asynchronous routing protocols for quantum networks by incorporating the idea of maintaining a dynamic topology in a distributed manner, which has been extensively studied in classical routing for lossy networks, such as using a destination-oriented directed acyclic graph (DODAG) or a spanning tree. The protocols update the entanglement-link topology asynchronously, identify optimal entanglement-swapping paths, and preserve unused direct-link entanglements. Our results indicate that asynchronous protocols achieve a larger upper bound with an appropriate setting and significantly higher entanglement rate than existing synchronous approaches, and the rate increases with coherence time, suggesting that it will have a much more profound impact on quantum networks as technology advances.