Generating and distributing remote entangled pairs (EPs) is the most important responsibility of quantum networks, because entanglement serves as the fundamental resource for important quantum networks applications. A key performance metric for quantum networks is the time-to-serve (TTS) for users' EP requests, which is the time to distribute EPs between the requesting users. Reducing the TTS is critically important given the limited qubit coherence time. In this paper, we study the Adaptive Continuous entanglement generation Protocol (ACP), which enables quantum network nodes to continuously generate EPs with their neighbors, while adaptively selecting the neighbors to reduce the TTS. Meanwhile, entanglement purification is used to mitigate the idling decoherence of the EPs generated by the ACP prior to the arrival user requests. We extend the capability of the SeQUeNCe simulator to allow the implementation of the ACP with full support. Then through extensive simulations, we evaluate the ACP at different network scales, demonstrating significant improvements in both the TTS (up to 94% decrease) and the fidelity (up to 0.05 increase) of distributed entanglement.

翻译：生成和分发远程纠缠对是量子网络最重要的职责，因为纠缠是重要量子网络应用的基础资源。量子网络的一个关键性能指标是用户纠缠对请求的服务时间，即向请求用户分发纠缠对所需的时间。鉴于量子比特相干时间的有限性，降低服务时间至关重要。本文研究了自适应连续纠缠生成协议，该协议使量子网络节点能够与邻居节点持续生成纠缠对，同时自适应地选择邻居节点以降低服务时间。与此同时，协议采用纠缠纯化来缓解用户请求到达前由自适应连续纠缠生成协议生成的纠缠对因闲置而产生的退相干效应。我们扩展了SeQUeNCe模拟器的功能，使其能够完整支持自适应连续纠缠生成协议的实现。随后通过大量仿真，我们在不同网络规模下评估了该协议，结果表明其在分发纠缠的服务时间（最高降低94%）和保真度（最高提升0.05）方面均有显著改善。