Single-step transfer or exchange of multipartite quantum entanglement with minimum resources

Abstract: The transfer or exchange of multipartite quantum states is critical to the realization of large-scale quantum information processing and quantum communication. A challenging question in this context is: What is the minimum resource required and how to simultaneously transfer or exchange multipartite quantum entanglement between two sets of qubits. Finding the answer to these questions is of great importance to quantum information science. In this work, we demonstrate that by using a single quantum two-level system - the simplest quantum object - as a coupler arbitrary multipartite quantum states (either entangled or separable) can be transferred or exchanged simultaneously between two sets of qubits. Our findings offer the potential to significantly reduce the resources needed to construct and operate large-scale quantum information networks consisting of many multi-qubit registers, memory cells, and processing units.