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Welcome to The Quantum Protocol Zoo - Explore, Learn, Code and Implement Quantum Protocols
The quantum protocol zoo is an open repository of protocols for quantum networks. It provides a compact and canonical way to explore such protocols. Moreover, it allows for easy communication among computer scientists, engineers and physicists on a single platform.
Getting started
Quantum Protocol Zoo is a repository of protocols for quantum networks. It presents a wiki of protocols for various functionalities classified in terms of the network stages for quantum internet. It is important to note that, although, there are several different ways of defining a protocol, we characterise it as something that involves more than one party. In particular, we define a protocol as a sequence of steps, specifically designed to accomplish a task. It may or may not involve an algorithm and could be run between trusted parties as well as parties who don't trust each other.
The wiki consists of two types of pages: The first type is a functionality page, describing a general task which can be realised in a quantum network (the "what"). The second type of page is a protocol page, which describes a specific protocol implementing the defined functionality (the "how"). These pages are listed in Protocol Library. Furthermore, a page on Supplementary Information has been provided for background information about quantum theory. Any information on How to Submit or contact can be found in the Navigation menu on the sidebar. Every page has a Discussion section, where users are welcome to leave their comments.
The goal
The goal of this project is multi-fold. Firstly, it aims to provide a compact review of all the existing protocols in one place for beginners in a manner that is accessible to both the young researchers as well as "quantum enthusiasts" (anyone who has basic knowledge about the postulates of quantum mechanics). Secondly, for experts in both theory and experiments, it gives an exciting opportunity to find real-life use cases for the listed protocols and at the same time innovate on the existing ones in order to develop completely new protocols. Finally, our main intention is to standardise all the known protocols to make the community "quantum-internet" ready. At the same time, we would like to emphasise that our purpose is not to point out the strengths and weaknesses of any particular protocol or functionality. Instead, we would like to initiate a discussion on a fair measure to calculate implementation costs in different physical systems and to recognise the underlying building blocks for quantum internet protocols. As a direct consequence of this effort, hosting the protocols in this fashion provides an intuitive link between several protocols to gain a better understanding. Moreover, with the progress of technology and improvements in the current protocols, we would like to have a resource that can be updated, something that is not justified with the review articles or a book. We, therefore, invite everyone from the quantum information community to contribute to this initiative in collectively making the protocol zoo a crucial source for quantum protocols.
Wonder what's the format for contribution?
We welcome contributions from various fields, here we give the format of the kinds of pages, the wiki is composed of. A more detailed set of guidelines for submissions can be found on the How to Submit page.
Functionality File
Functionality file describes a general task which can be realized in a quantum network (the "what"). It consists of the following sections.
- Functionality Description A lucid definition of functionality in discussion.
- Tags Any related page or list of protocols is connected by this section
- Use Case (if available) compares security, efficiency and practicality of quantum protocols with its available classical analogues; connects protocols with real world applications.
- Protocols List of different types of example protocol achieving the functionality (Each protocol in this list is written in the format given below) depending on the task achieved or Network Stages required to achieve the same functionality
- Properties All properties that should be satisfied by any protocol achieving the concerned functionality and other common terminologies used in all the protocols.
- Further Information Any issue that could not be addressed or find a place in the above sections or any review paper discussing a feature of various types of protocols related to the functionality.
Protocol File
Protocol file describes a specific protocol implementing the defined functionality (the "how"). It consists of the following sections.
- Link to the corresponding functionality together with short description of the method used and properties satisfied by a protocol.
- Tags Any related page or list of protocols is connected by this section
- Assumptions It describes the setting in which the protocol will be successful. Any assumption on the setup for the protocol below is listed in this section.
- Outline A non-mathematical detailed outline which provides a rough idea of the concerned protocol. A figure is accommodated for most protocols.
- Notation Connects the non-mathematical outline with further sections.
- Hardware requirements Order of digits related to threshold values, QBit Error Rate (QBER), parameters, etc.. are illustrated in this section.
- Properties A list of important information extracted from the protocol such as, parameters (threshold values), security claim, success probability, etc..
- Pseudocode Mathematical step-wise protocol algorithm helpful to write a subroutine.
- Further Information Any useful information that could not find its place in the above description goes here. Also, some pages on protocols might include short description as below for list of protocols in the same class of functionality and network stage that are easy to interpret after reading the concerned formal description (or are variants of the protocol discussed above):
- Theoretical Papers:
- How is it different from the above protocol
- Requirements
- Security
- Experimental Papers:
- Which paper or protocol does it implement
- Benchmark values for this demonstration