Trapped-ion-based quantum repeater node across a 17 km metropolitan fiber
Abstract
Concatenation of quantum repeater nodes has been proposed as a means to distribute entanglement efficiently across future long-distance networks. Here, we demonstrate a trapped-ion repeater node that establishes photonic entanglement over a 17 km fiber traversing a city, moving beyond laboratory-only prototypes. The node comprises two atomic ions coupled to an optical cavity. First, a detailed characterization is performed of the long fiber channel and of ion-photon entanglement distributed across it. Next, a repeater-node protocol is implemented, achieving entanglement between a local photon and a remote photon with a Bell-state fidelity of 81.6+1.9−1.4%. These results demonstrate that trapped-ion repeater-node technology can operate over existing city-scale fiber infrastructure and represent a step toward distributed quantum repeater networks.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{fabitha2026trappedionbased,
title = {{Trapped-ion-based quantum repeater node across a 17 km metropolitan fiber}},
author = {K. Fabitha and T. Runggaldier and A. Winkler and F. Bernecker and J. Bate and M. Canteri and J. Helgert and T. E. Northup and V. Krutyanskiy and B. P. Lanyon},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.27854},
eprint = {2610.27854},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27854},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Trapped-ion-based quantum repeater node across a 17 km metropolitan fiber
AU - K. Fabitha
AU - T. Runggaldier
AU - A. Winkler
AU - F. Bernecker
AU - J. Bate
AU - M. Canteri
AU - J. Helgert
AU - T. E. Northup
AU - V. Krutyanskiy
AU - B. P. Lanyon
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.27854
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27854
AB - Concatenation of quantum repeater nodes has been proposed as a means to distribute entanglement efficiently across future long-distance networks. Here, we demonstrate a trapped-ion repeater node that establishes photonic entanglement over a 17 km fiber traversing a city, moving beyond laboratory-only prototypes. The node comprises two atomic ions coupled to an optical cavity. First, a detailed characterization is performed of the long fiber channel and of ion-photon entanglement distributed across it. Next, a repeater-node protocol is implemented, achieving entanglement between a local photon and a remote photon with a Bell-state fidelity of 81.6^+1.9_−1.4%. These results demonstrate that trapped-ion repeater-node technology can operate over existing city-scale fiber infrastructure and represent a step toward distributed quantum repeater networks.
ER -