Quantum repeaters based on Rydberg-blockade-coupled atomic ensembles

We propose a scheme for realizing quantum repeaterswith Rydberg-blockade-coupled atomic ensembles, based on a recently proposed collective encoding strategy. Rydberg-blockade-mediated two-qubit gates and efficient cooperative photon emission are employed to create ensemble-photon entanglement. Thanks to deterministic entanglement swapping operations via Rydberg-based two-qubit gates, and to the suppression of multiexcitation errors by the blockade effect, the entanglement distribution rate of the present scheme is higher by orders of magnitude than the rates achieved by other ensemble-based repeaters. We also show how to realize temporal multiplexing with this system, which offers an additional speedup in entanglement distribution.