Repeater-Based Quantum Communication Protocol: Maximizing Teleportation Fidelity with Minimal Entanglement

Transmitting unknown quantum states to distant locations is crucial for distributed quantum information protocols. The seminal quantum teleportation scheme achieves this feat while requiring prior maximal entanglement between the sender and receiver. In scenarios with noisy entangled states, optimal teleportation fidelity characterizes the efficacy of transmitting the state, demanding the proper selection of local operations at the sender's and receiver's ends. The complexity escalates further in long-range communication setups, prompting the consideration of a repeater-based approach, which incorporates arrays of nodes with multiple segments to facilitate the efficient transmission of quantum information. The fidelity of the communication line gets degraded even if a single segment is affected by noise. In such cases, the general wisdom employs the standard entanglement swapping protocol involving maximally entangled states across the noiseless segments and applying maximally entangled basis measurement at the corresponding nodes to achieve optimal fidelity. In this Letter, we propose a more efficient protocol for a certain class of noisy states in any intermediary segment, achieving the same fidelity as the standard protocol while consuming less amount of entanglement. Our approach ensures enhanced teleportation fidelity even when the end-to-end state gets noisier, and thus promises efficient utility of quantum resources in repeater-based distributed quantum protocols.