The exploitation of quantum coherence at the level of propagation represents a powerful paradigm for quantum communication networks. In this work, we show that the coherent superposition of spatially distinct communication links enables entanglement generation inherently during distribution. Specifically, separable quantum states can be deterministically transformed into entangled states, when the noisy communication links they traverse are coherently superposed. Contrary to the conventional view of noise as a detrimental effect, we demonstrate that quantum noise itself can be transformed into a constructive resource for entanglement generation for both bipartite and multipartite entanglement. Given the practical feasibility of implementing spatial superposition in interferometric setups, our approach provides a feasible method for distributed entanglement engineering, opening new directions for quantum communication and networked quantum technologies.

The coexistence of quantum and classical signals in optical fiber infrastructures represents a major challenge for large-scale quantum networks, as noise sources such as Raman scattering can significantly impact entanglement distribution, and the quantum protocols based on it. In this work, we analyze Raman scattering in the C-band, used for entanglement distribution, generated by a classical the O-band signal. The main contribution of this study lays in investigating these effects in a real metropolitan-fiber network, moving beyond controlled laboratory experiments to deployed telecommunication environments. Measurements are performed over a 7 km metropolitan fiber link using commercial sources and narrowband lasers. The experimental results shows good agreement between the measurements taken under laboratory conditions, although, within the metropolitan-scale loop, localized spectral anomalies are observed in the deployed fibers. Therefore, our results show that, whenever a quantum signal propagates in the C-band alongside an O-band classical channel within the same fiber, careful selection of the operating frequency is required, as Raman scattering and other real-world noise sources can significantly affect the quality and stability of the quantum transmission. In particular, we identify spectral regions that are less affected by Raman noise, thereby providing practical guidelines for optimal quantum channel allocation. We demonstrate that Raman-induced noise constitutes a dominant contribution to the quantum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in realistic deployments, beyond background and detector noise. Overall, our findings offer practical insights for deploying quantum communication systems over existing fiber networks, supporting the development of robust and scalable quantum infrastructures.

This second special issue on quantum networking brings together four contributions that collectively capture the state of the art, spanning theory, system design, and experimental implementation.

In the Quantum Internet, multipartite entanglement enables a rich and dynamic overlay topology, referred to as artificial topology, upon the physical one, that can be exploited for communication purposes. In fact, the ability to extract n-qubits GHZ states and EPR pairs from the original multipartite entangled state constitutes the resource primitives for end-to-end and on-demand quantum communications. Thus, in this paper, we theoretically determine upper and lower bounds for the number of extractable n-qubits GHZ states and EPR pairs involving nodes remote in the artificial topology, as well as the achievable size n of remote GHZ states. The theoretical analysis is then complemented by the proposal of a novel algorithm, which provides in polynomial-time a heuristic solution to the above problem. This is remarkable, since the theoretical problem is NP-complete. The performance analysis demonstrates the proposed algorithm is able to effectively manipulate the original and arbitrary graph state for extracting entanglement resources across remote nodes.

Forwarding in quantum networks cannot be realized by directly transposing classical switching fabrics, since the no-cloning theorem and the quantum measurement postulate constrain the direct relay of quantum information while ruling out copy-based buffering and inspection. In this paper, we propose a switching-fabric framework for quantum routers based on multipartite entanglement. Specifically, we formalize the notion of an entanglement-based switching fabric, in which a graph state acts as the forwarding resource and entanglement forwarding is realized through local Pauli measurements. We translate the classical notions of blocking and non-blocking operation into structural conditions for entanglement-based fabrics, by deriving the \textit{edge-controlled (EC) design principle} for non-blocking operation. We instantiate this principle through a monolithic \textit{EC crossbar} and a modular Clos-type EC fabric, for which we characterize resource scaling and identify the regime where the modular design becomes more resource-efficient than the monolithic one. Finally, a forwarding-latency analysis establishes a fundamental distinction between matching-oblivious and matching-driven forwarding: the proposed EC fabrics realize all requested input-output entanglement links with constant forwarding depth under sufficient measurement parallelism, whereas matching-driven EPR-based fabrics exhibit latency that scales with the number of requested connections. The proposed framework provides a hardware-agnostic foundation for quantum-router switching fabrics.

Classical crossbar routers cannot be directly adopted in the quantum domain, due to the laws of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we propose an entanglement-based crossbar as the quantum counterpart of the classical switching fabric, enabling generalized forwarding solely through local Pauli measurements on a multipartite entangled resource, acting as a switching fabric. We formalize the notions of blocking and non-blocking conditions in the quantum domain by providing the design tenets to achieve a non-blocking switching fabric. Then, we introduce the edge-controlled design principle by identifying the minimal 2 × 2 non-blocking base unit as the fundamental building block for scalable router architectures. The proposed framework provides a hardware-agnostic and scalable foundation for quantum routers, bridging classical network theory with quantum-native forwarding.

The key objective of the Quantum Internet is the distribution and manipulation of entanglement to enable unprecedented applications. This requires a radical departure from classical Internet design principles, such as the end-to-end argument, due to the inherently stateful and non-local nature of entanglement, which demands coordinated in-network operations and persistent state awareness. To this end, we propose a novel hierarchical Quantum Internet architecture centered on the concept of Entanglement-Defined Controller (EDC). This architectural design constitutes the foundational layer, by enabling a clear separation between control and data planes. While necessary, this separation is insufficient to manage entanglement resources, requiring a quantum-native control plane. Consequently, we propose a quantum addressing scheme that embeds quantumness directly into node identifiers, allowing the network to natively track and manipulate entanglement as a dynamic resource. Built upon these two interdependent pillars-EDC-based architecture and quantum addressing-we design a quantum-native routing protocol that achieves scalability through compact routing tables, by efficiently operating over entanglement-defined topologies. Finally, we design a quantum address splitting functionality based on Schr & ouml;dinger's oracles that generalizes classical match-and-forward logic to the quantum domain. Collectively, these contributions demonstrate, for the first time, the fundamental advantages of quantum-by-design network control for enabling scalable quantum networking.

The coexistence of quantum and classical signals in the same optical fiber is a critical challenge for the deployment of quantum networks. Indeed, selecting an optimal channel for quantum signal transmission is crucial to minimize noise arising from co-propagating classical signals. This work experimentally investigates spontaneous Raman scattering (SpRS), a major source of noise in signals transmitted along the same fiber. Unlike most previous studies relying on narrow-linewidth laboratory lasers or architectures based on spatial or temporal multiplexing of quantum and classical signals, we employ commercial SFP optical transceivers and standard single-core single-mode fiber for the transmission of quantum and classical signals in the same fiber, reflecting conditions typical of deployed urban fiber infrastructures. Building on these measurements, we derive a compact and predictive model that captures the Raman scattering profile, enabling accurate estimation of SpRS noise as a function of source power, wavelength, and fiber length. A key outcome of this work is that the proposed model is independent of the specific optical source used, demonstrating its generality and robustness. The model can therefore be used for the identification of optimal C-band channels for quantum signal allocation, namely those least affected by SpRS noise generated by co-propagating O-band classical traffic. These results pave the way for a parameter-robust description of Raman scattering applicable to diverse fiber-based systems.

Quantum network simulators are essential for the design and evaluation of quantum network architectures and protocols. However, developing an effective simulator is particularly challenging due to the stateful and non-local nature of quantum entanglement, which requires persistent state awareness and tight in-network coordination. Moreover, because quantum communication protocols inherently rely on classical signaling, a realistic simulator must seamlessly integrate classical and quantum communication primitives within a unified framework. In this work, we present $Q 2 N S$, a modular and extensible quantum network simulation framework built on top of ns-3. The architectural design of $Q 2 N S$ enforces a clear separation of concerns between the operational functionalities of modules and entities and the overarching control logic, enabling easy adaptation to heterogeneous and rapidly evolving Quantum Internet paradigms while leveraging ns-3's mature classical networking stack. Additionally, $\boldsymbol{Q} 2 N S$ includes a dedicated visualization tool to facilitate developing an intuitive understanding of entanglement-based quantum networking. This design enables accurate modeling of entanglement dynamics and protocol control logic, by providing a flexible, open, and scalable platform for advancing the Quantum Internet research.

The unique and non-classical features of quantum networks make their simulation and intuitive understanding inherently difficult. In this work, we present Q2NSViz, an open-source Python-based visualization tool for replaying and inspecting quantum-network simulation traces. Q2NSViz reconstructs the time evolution of the simulated network state, including physical topology, stored and in-flight qubits, classical bits and packets, measurements, and entanglement relationships. In this way, it exposes not only physical connectivity, but also the dynamic entanglement-induced structure produced, consumed, and transformed by protocol execution. Q2NSViz is built around a decoupled JSON/NDJSON trace contract, a Qt-free replay engine, and an interactive PyQt6 interface, making it a standalone companion to Q2NS and reusable by other simulation backends that emit the same trace format. By turning execution traces into navigable and reproducible visual artifacts, Q2NSViz provides a zero-coding tool for researchers and educators, narrowing the gap between abstract protocol logic and concrete execution.

Q2NS is an open-source quantum network simulator built on ns-3, the de facto standard for classical network simulation. By inheriting ns-3's mature classical stack and event-driven execution model, Q2NS enables faithful co-simulation of quantum-network dynamics and classical signaling, a core requirement for the functioning of any quantum network. Its modular architecture is designed for extensibility, with pluggable quantum-state backends (state-vector, density matrix, stabilizer) and a clean separation between network control and node-level operations. Q2NS comes with a quantum network visualizer Q2NSViz, supporting interactive inspection of both physical- and entanglement-induced connectivity graphs, helping users interpret protocol behavior and entanglement manipulation processes. We present a demonstration of Q2NS, highlighting its ability to capture and simulate the coexistence of quantum and classical communication. The proposed demonstration presents quantum communication scenarios of increasing complexity: from entanglement distribution basics to multipartite graph-state manipulation, complemented by pre-loaded examples in Q2NSViz that require no prior quantum communication or coding experience.

Layering, the organization principle of network protocols underpinning the classical Internet, is ill-suited to the Quantum Internet, built around entanglement, which is non-local and stateful. This paper proposes a quantum-native organizational principle based on dynamic composition, which replaces static layering with a distributed orchestration fabric driven by the node local state and in-band control. Each node runs a Dynamic Kernel that constructs a local Plan of Actions (PoA) of candidate steps to advance a given service intent, and executes the PoA by composing atomic micro-protocols (MPs) into context-aware procedures, termed meta-protocols. Quantum packets carry an in-band control-field - the meta-header - containing the service intent and an append-only list of action-commit records, called stamps. Successive nodes exploit this minimal, authoritative history to construct their local PoAs. As packets progress, stamps collectively induce a networkwide, direct acyclic graph that certifies end-to-end service fulfillment, without requiring global synchronization. Unlike classical encapsulation, which prescribes a fixed vertical-processing order, the proposed suite enforces order by certification: dependency-aware local scheduling decides what may run at a node, stamps certify what did run and constrain subsequent planning. By embedding procedural control within the packet itself, the design ensures consistency between entanglement-state evolution and control-flow, preventing divergence between resource state and protocol logic, while remaining MP-agnostic and implementation-decoupled. The resulting suite is modular, adaptable to entanglement dynamics, scalable and correct with or without optional control-plane hints, which may steer QoS policies, without changing semantics. We argue that dynamic composition is the organizing principle required for a truly quantum-native Internet.

Shared multipartite entanglement defines a “whatever channel”, i.e., a latent communication substrate that does not determine a priori which end-to-end entangled links are activated, but can be configured to support different entanglement-connectivity graphs through Local Operations and Classical Communication (LOCC). Building on this, we propose a resource-driven framework in which multipartite entanglement is treated as a programmable resource that induces a space of admissible entanglement-graph configurations. Within this framework, connectivity provisioning emerges as a particular instance of a more general resource reconfiguration process. To support this paradigm, we introduce a set of structural design parameters that characterize the operational degrees of freedom of the resource and define the admissible transformations independently of the specific mechanism used to realize them. We then formalize Entanglement Rolling as a measurement-based protocol that operates over the induced configuration space, enabling the systematic reconfiguration of the shared resource across a family of multipartite states. Finally, we analyze the proposed framework under realistic noise conditions. Leveraging the Noisy Stabilizer Formalism (NSF), we derive closed-form noise maps that characterize the effect of noise on the resource transformations and show that the proposed approach maintains reliable performance under relevant noise processes.

Time synchronization is a fundamental requirement in entanglement-based quantum networks, where the indistinguishability of photons in the time domain is essential for enabling Hong-Ou-Mandel interference and entanglement swapping. In addition to precise temporal alignment, it is equally crucial to ensure the stability of the reference clock over time, as even small fluctuations can degrade the overall performance of the network. In this work, we investigate the stability of clock synchronization for entanglement distribution based on entangled-photon sources operating in the telecommunication C-band. Temporal correlations between photon detection events are analyzed using time-tagged coincidence measurements, enabling the extraction of synchronization peaks and their long-term stability. Experimental results demonstrate that, once locked, the sources exhibit stable temporal correlations over an 8-hour acquisition period, with a maximum observed drift of approximately 120 ps, primarily associated with long fiber links. The width of the correlation peak remains consistent with detector jitter, indicating negligible additional system-induced temporal broadening. A central result of this work is the experimental synchronization between two entanglement-photon sources in a realistic metropolitan deployment, where entanglement distribution is performed over existing telecommunication infrastructure characterized by non-negligible losses and background noise. In this scenario, despite the presence of significant imperfections introduced by the metropolitan-scale fiber network, the observed correlations remain clearly detectable and are consistently well-approximated by Gaussian statistics. This confirms that the two sources can be reliably synchronized not only in controlled laboratory conditions but also under real-world operating constraints.

Conventional quantum routing operates under the entrenched assumption that pathfinding is a prerequisite for routing. This classical-inspired routing model imposes a restricting design option, which prevents scaling the quantumness to the network functioning. In this paper, we proposed a novel entanglement-driven routing framework that exploits multipartite entanglement complementation for enabling simultaneous 1-hop connectivity among all non-adjacent source-destination pairs. This changes the notion of “remoteness” in the entanglement graph, activated by entanglement. We extend this framework to inter-domain quantum networks and design a polynomial-time algorithm. Such an algorithm allows to select and parallelize multiple requests, bypassing NP-complete path discovery. Performance analysis shows the proposed routing strategy achieves up to 60% hop reduction, with the algorithm enabling efficient parallelism and strong scalability in inter-domain quantum networks.

The Quantum Internet operates on entanglement, a non-local, non-copyable, stateful network resource, which motivates protocol organization beyond classical layering. We present a first executable specialization of the Dynamic Kernel/QPacket logic from the beyond-layering protocol suite, targeting entanglement distribution over a linear quantum repeater chain. The implementation builds on Q2NS, an ns-3-based quantum-network simulation module available through the ns-3 App Store. It realizes QPacket meta-headers with service intent and append-only action-commit stamps processed by node-local Dynamic Kernels organized as a Planner–Executor–Engine pipeline, while being deliberately scoped to an analytically verifiable service and policy. Within this scoped setting, we study node heterogeneity through a link-preparation policy that accounts for pre-distributed entanglement and uneven entanglement-generation support across nodes, including delegation via QPacket forwarding. Simulations verify analytical link-resolvability models and expose signaling load, forwarding behavior, and QPacket meta-header growth. Results show that QPacket overhead is shaped by more than just encoding, including policy choices and available network resources. Overall, this study demonstrates how the Q2NS/ns-3 substrate can support reproducible, policy-specific evaluation of quantum-native protocol-suite concepts.

Entanglement generation and distribution is a core functionality of quantum networks. Traditional approaches to this functionality rely on chains of quantum repeaters or on manipulation of multipartite states. In this work, we explore an alternative paradigm that explores quantum coherence at propagation level, by enabling genuine quantum instantiations of communication channels, existing in superposed configurations. We demonstrate that this mechanism can be harnessed to generate both bipartite and multipartite entangled states from separable inputs. Specifically, we show that Bell states can be obtained from initially separable two-qubit states, through the superposition of two unitary quantum channels. The proposed approach is further extended to multipartite systems, by generating n-qubit GHZ and W states and thereby revealing the constructive role of superposed quantum operations in entanglement creation. Moreover, we analyze the robustness of the proposed scheme against noise, showing that the resulting states retain high fidelity and concurrence even under realistic imperfections. Our results suggest that, under appropriate quantum control, noisy superposed paths can be effectively harnessed to engineer entanglement generation and distribution in quantum networks.

We introduce the concept of Quantum Ping (QPing) as a diagnostic primitive for future quantum networks, designed to assess whether two or more end nodes can establish practical quantum entanglement under given resource and time constraints, with controlled overhead and time-adaptive fidelity thresholds. Unlike classical ping, which probes network-layer connectivity through ICMP messages, our proposed quantum version is adapted to the unique features of quantum networks, where connectivity depends on the availability and quality of shared entanglement. We develop a formal framework for QPing and leverage tools such as sequential hypothesis testing to probe quantum connectivity. We present several strategies, including active strategies with path-based and segment-based variants, and resource-based strategies that utilize pre-shared entangled resources. We further provide a quantitative performance evaluation of these strategies, including diagnostic cost, latency, and feasibility under time-dependent decoherence. QPing can serve as a flexible diagnostic building block for quantum networks, designed to operate alongside fundamental network operations and to accommodate different architectural assumptions and protocol design approaches.

The complementary features of different qubit platforms for computing and communicating impose an intrinsic hardware heterogeneity in any quantum network, where nodes, while processing and storing quantum information, must also communicate through quantum links. Indeed, one of the most promising hardware platforms at quantum node scale for scalable and fast quantum computing is the superconducting technology, which operates at microwave frequencies. Whereas, for communicating at distances of practical interest beyond few meters, quantum links should operate at optical frequencies. Therefore, to allow the interaction between superconducting and photonic technologies, a quantum interface, known as quantum transducer, able to convert one type of qubit to another is required. This paper aims to provide a tutorial treatise on the fundamental research challenges of quantum transduction. The tutorial is structured around a communications engineering framework, thereby shedding light on its fundamental role in quantum network design and deployment—a perspective often overlooked in existing literature. This framework allows us to categorize different transduction modalities and to reveal an unorthodox one where the transducer itself can act as an entanglement source. From this standpoint, it is possible to conceive different source-destination link archetypes, where transduction plays a crucial role in the communication performances. The analysis also translates the quantum transduction process into a proper functional block within a new communication system model for a quantum network.