Trapped Ion Quantum Networking and Telecommunications Coexisting on One Fiber

Research into long-distance quantum memory-based networking to date has exclusively used dark fibers. This avoids the detector background from telecommunications (telecom) traffic, but as a result excludes many fibers deployed in the field. If memory-photon entanglement and telecom signals coexist on one fiber, the entire classical fiber infrastructure becomes available for quantum links. We present the first experimental demonstration of such coexistence. Ion-photon entanglement using 1092 nm photons emitted by a Strontium-88 ion is distributed over a deployed 2.8 km fiber loop which carries Ethernet and 5G traffic. All classical control signals required to coordinate the quantum transmitter and receiver systems co-propagate on the same fiber. These include fiber sensing for polarization stabilization. Our results demonstrate that memory-based quantum networks can be realized on active classical network infrastructure.