Quantum communication for satellite-to-ground networks with partially entangled states

To realize practical wide-area quantum communication,a satellite-to-ground network with partially entangled states is developed in this paper.For efficiency and security reasons,the existing method of quantum communication in distributed wireless quantum networks with partially entangled states cannot be applied directly to the proposed quantum network.Based on this point,an efficient and secure quantum communication scheme with partially entangled states is presented.In our scheme,the source node performs teleportation only after an end-to-end entangled state has been established by entanglement swapping with partially entangled states.Thus,the security of quantum communication is guaranteed.The destination node recovers the transmitted quantum bit with the help of an auxiliary quantum bit and specially defined unitary matrices.Detailed calculations and simulation analyses show that the probability of successfully transferring a quantum bit in the presented scheme is high.In addition,the auxiliary quantum bit provides a heralded mechanism for successful communication.Based on the critical components that are presented in this article an efficient,secure,and practical wide-area quantum communication can be achieved.