Proposal for distribution of multi-photon entanglement with optimal rate-distance scaling

Abstract: We propose a protocol to perform long-range distribution of near-maximally entangled multiphoton states, allowing versatile applications such as quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum metrology which can provide alternatives to state-of-the-art protocols. Our scheme uses resources available within the current integrated quantum photonic technology: squeezed vacuum states and photon-number-resolving detectors. The distributed entanglement can be certified by Bell tests which have the potential to be loophole free, and may be directly used in well established QKD protocols. Generally, this provides measurement-device-independent (MDI) levels of security, which may be upgraded to fully device-independent (DI) security if the Bell test is loophole-free. In both cases, the protocol is robust to extremely high transmission losses, matching the optimal $O(\sqrt{\eta})$ scaling of key rate with channel transmittance.