A Simulator of Atom-Atom Entanglement with Atomic Ensembles and Quantum Optics

One fundamental goal of quantum networks is to provide node-to-node entanglement distribution. In this work, we develop a simulator, called A²Tango, for entanglement generation between two remote atom-ensemble nodes in a quantum network following Briegel, Dur, Cirac and Zoller (BDCZ) protocol. We encode quantum information to the two spatial modes of local atomic-ensemble spin waves and polarization states of single photons. The basic operations include atom-photon entanglement generation, quantum memory write-read operations, two-photon Bell-state measurement, and quantum state tomography. We model multi-photon events during the local excitation and propagation to account for their induced error in entanglement generation and distribution. We investigate the entanglement generation rate and fidelity as functions of the parameters which are realizable in experiments. Our work improves the open-sourced SeQUeNCe simulator and inspires the development of future quantum networks.