Quantum communications is a promising technology that will play a fundamental role in the design of future networks. In fact, significant efforts are being dedicated by both the quantum physics and the classical communications communities on developing new architectures, solutions, and practical implementations of quantum communication networks (QCNs). Although these efforts led to various advances in today's technologies, there still exists a non-trivial gap between the research efforts of the two communities on designing and optimizing the performance of QCNs. For instance, most prior works by the classical communications community ignore important quantum physics-based constraints when designing QCNs. For example, many existing works on entanglement distribution do not account for the decoherence of qubits inside quantum memories and, thus, their designs become impractical since they assume an infinite lifetime of quantum states.

In this paper inspired talk, we bring forth a novel analysis of the performance of QCNs in a physics-informed manner, by relying on the quantum physics principles that underlie the different components of QCNs. The need of the physics-informed approach is then assessed and its fundamental role in designing practical QCNs is analyzed across various open research areas. 

Moreover, we identify novel physics-informed performance metrics and controls that enable QCNs to leverage the state-of-the-art advancements in quantum technologies to enhance their performance. 

Finally, we analyze multiple pressing challenges and open research directions in QCNs that must be treated using a physics-informed approach to lead practically viable results. Ultimately, this work attempts to bridge the gap between the classical communications and the quantum physics communities in the area of QCNs to foster the development of the future communication networks towards the quantum Internet.

Mahdi Chehimi received his BS in Electrical Engineering with honours from Kuwait University in 2018 and his MENG in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 2020 with a focus on communications, radio frequency, and physical layer security. He is currently a PhD student at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. His research interests include Quantum Communications, Quantum Networking, and Quantum Machine Learning with applications to wireless networks.

Personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/mahdi-chehimi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahdi-chehimi-aa69b9159/

Physics-informed Quantum Communication Networks: A Vision Towards the Quantum Internet