Entanglement is unanimously recognized as the key communication resource of the Quantum Internet. Yet, the possibility of implementing novel network functionalities by exploiting the marvels of entanglement has been poorly investigated so far, by mainly restricting the attention to bipartite entanglement. Conversely, in this paper, we aim at exploiting multipartite entanglement as inter-network resource. Specifically, we consider the interconnection of different Quantum Local Area Networks (QLANs), and we show that multipartite entanglement allows to dynamically generate an inter-QLAN artificial topology, by means of local operations only, that overcomes the limitations of the physical QLAN topologies. To this aim, we first design the multipartite entangled state to be distributed within each QLAN. Then, we show how such a state can be engineered to: i) interconnect nodes belonging to different QLANs, and ii) dynamically adapt to different inter-QLAN traffic patterns. Our contribution aims at providing the network engineering community with a hands-on guideline towards the concept of artificial topology and artificial neighborhood.

翻译：纠缠被一致公认为量子互联网的关键通信资源。然而，利用纠缠的奇妙特性实现新型网络功能的可能性迄今鲜有研究，且主要局限于对二分体纠缠的关注。相反，本文旨在利用多分体纠缠作为网络间资源。具体而言，我们考虑不同量子局域网（QLAN）的互连，并证明多分体纠缠允许通过仅本地操作动态生成跨QLAN的人工拓扑，从而克服物理QLAN拓扑的限制。为此，我们首先设计出待分发至每个QLAN内的多分体纠缠态，随后展示如何对该态进行工程化处理，以实现：（i）互连不同QLAN中的节点，以及（ii）动态适应不同的跨QLAN流量模式。本文贡献旨在为网络工程界提供一份面向实践的指导，帮助理解人工拓扑与人工邻域的概念。