Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Quantum networks are usually framed by two hardware limits: how fast entanglement can be heralded, and how long a memory can hold it. We establish a third, geometric limit: entanglement decoheres while control information travels, so the distance to whoever allocates resources enters the fidelity budget directly. We develop a functional-graph abstraction weighting each link by its predicted multiplicative contribution to end-to-end fidelity, separating global but delayed state from local and immediate state, and compare centralized against local allocation in a replicated discrete-event model. Centralized delivery latency grows with network diameter while local latency is nearly scale invariant, differing up to twenty-fold for short-range traffic; the coherence threshold at which a global view outweighs a fresh one does not shift across the tested sizes; and as heralding accelerates, the dominant cost moves into the control plane. Slot synchronization instead obeys the product of slot rate and one-way link delay, so it is bounded by repeater spacing rather than diameter. Controller placement, decision locality, repeater spacing and slot rate are physical design parameters, not implementation details.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Dey, I., Marchetti, N.
Institution: South East Technological University
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213625748