English

Co-transmission of classical data and continuous-variable entanglement over a single quantum channel

Quantum Physics 2026-07-28 v1

Abstract

Displacement-based simultaneous quantum-classical communications (SQCC) protocols, as originally proposed, are generally incompatible with the majority of useful quantum communication schemes, such as entanglement distribution or repeater-based quantum key distribution: direct measurement of the classical signal also measures and destroys the quantum state, leaving point-to-point Gaussian quantum key distribution as the only quantum communication scheme amenable to integration with SQCC. In this work, we apply the classically-modulated quantum communication protocol proposed by Zaunders and Ralph [arXiv:2606.03181v3] to circumvent this issue and demonstrate the distribution of continuous-variable Gaussian entanglement simultaneously with classical information. We characterise the quality of the distributed entangled state and outline how the scheme is suitable for use in repeater-based networks. Lastly, we compute the secret key generation rate of the Gaussian CMQC scheme in the point-to-point case and compare it to the equivalent point-to-point SQCC protocol.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.25179,
  title  = {Co-transmission of classical data and continuous-variable entanglement over a single quantum channel},
  author = {Nicholas Zaunders and Timothy C. Ralph},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.25179},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

19 pages, 4 figures