Deterministic and Programmable Fusion for Scalable Generation of Photonic Graph States
Abstract
Entanglement in multiphoton graph states is an important resource with various applications, such as measurement-based quantum computing and memory-less quantum repeaters. While some primitive instances have been successfully prepared, scalable generation of large-scale graph states with programmable connections remains an outstanding challenge. Fusion provides a promising "divide-and-conquer" approach by linking smaller resource states into larger, more complex graphs. However, its practical scalability has been limited by the probabilistic nature of conventional fusion protocols, which necessitates extensive hardware overhead and feed-forward resources to achieve deterministic outcomes. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a deterministic fusion operation with built-in error mitigation, capable of connecting small time-bin-encoded cluster states--originally generated on-demand from a quantum emitter--into larger, reconfigurable photonic graph states of increased sizes. The fusion operation is realized by nondestructively projecting pairs of flying microwave photonic qubits into Bell states using superconducting circuits with in-situ programmability. Crucially, the protocol features active reset and reuse of matter qubits during graph state generation, thereby circumventing the coherence constraints of the quantum emitter and enabling the generation of genuine multipartite entanglement across 13 photonic qubits. Our results establish a scalable framework for photonic graph-state synthesis, paving the way for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation and distributed quantum networks.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026deterministic,
title = {{Deterministic and Programmable Fusion for Scalable Generation of Photonic Graph States}},
author = {Yan Li and Yunfan Yang and Zenghui Bao and Jize Yang and Luyan Sun and Yipu Song and Yukai Wu and Hongyi Zhang and Luming Duan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.19927},
eprint = {2610.19927},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19927},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Deterministic and Programmable Fusion for Scalable Generation of Photonic Graph States
AU - Yan Li
AU - Yunfan Yang
AU - Zenghui Bao
AU - Jize Yang
AU - Luyan Sun
AU - Yipu Song
AU - Yukai Wu
AU - Hongyi Zhang
AU - Luming Duan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.19927
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19927
AB - Entanglement in multiphoton graph states is an important resource with various applications, such as measurement-based quantum computing and memory-less quantum repeaters. While some primitive instances have been successfully prepared, scalable generation of large-scale graph states with programmable connections remains an outstanding challenge. Fusion provides a promising "divide-and-conquer" approach by linking smaller resource states into larger, more complex graphs. However, its practical scalability has been limited by the probabilistic nature of conventional fusion protocols, which necessitates extensive hardware overhead and feed-forward resources to achieve deterministic outcomes. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a deterministic fusion operation with built-in error mitigation, capable of connecting small time-bin-encoded cluster states--originally generated on-demand from a quantum emitter--into larger, reconfigurable photonic graph states of increased sizes. The fusion operation is realized by nondestructively projecting pairs of flying microwave photonic qubits into Bell states using superconducting circuits with in-situ programmability. Crucially, the protocol features active reset and reuse of matter qubits during graph state generation, thereby circumventing the coherence constraints of the quantum emitter and enabling the generation of genuine multipartite entanglement across 13 photonic qubits. Our results establish a scalable framework for photonic graph-state synthesis, paving the way for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation and distributed quantum networks.
ER -