Quantum NETwork: From Theory to Practice

This article discusses the research significance and recent developments in quantum internet technology. Quantum internet represents a transformative approach to traditional internet infrastructure, leveraging quantum resources and properties to potentially enhance data transmission efficiency, information processing capabilities, and network service security. It is considered one of the most important technology frontiers of the 21st century, with significant implications for national information security and digital economic development.

Baidu Quantum Computing Research Institute researchers have developed an open-source quantum network toolkit called QNET, which is detailed in a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences. QNET provides comprehensive capabilities for quantum network protocol design, application development, architecture testing, and experimental verification. The toolkit includes core engines for quantum computing and network simulation, hardware and topology modules for quantum network design, and a model library of common templates. It offers a complete discrete event simulation framework for efficient tracking and accurate simulation of quantum network system states, with modular design providing test environments for different quantum network architectures.

One notable achievement demonstrated in the article is the simulation of the Micius quantum satellite quantum key distribution experiment. The authors constructed models of the quantum satellite and free-space quantum channels within QNET to simulate the entire experimental process, including satellite attitude adjustment, tracking and locking, and key distribution. The simulation results showed high agreement with actual experimental data, validating the software implementation of this complex experiment.

The researchers hope that QNET will enable participation in subsequent high-difficulty, high-cost quantum experiments, reducing hardware experiment trial-and-error costs and accelerating quantum internet technology development. The toolkit has already been connected to real quantum hardware, allowing multi-node interaction protocols to be compiled into quantum circuits and executed on quantum computers.