Rate-Fidelity Tradeoffs in All-Photonic and Memory-Equipped Quantum Switches

Abstract: Quantum entanglement switches are a key building block for early quantum networks, and a central design question is whether near-term devices should use only flying photons or also incorporate quantum memories. We compare two architectures: an all-photonic entanglement generation switch (EGS) that repeatedly attempts Bell-state measurements (BSM) without storing qubits, and a quantum memory-equipped switch that buffers entanglement and triggers measurements only when heralded connectivity is available (herald-then-swap control). These two designs trade off simple, memoryless operation that avoids decoherence and memory-induced latency against heralding-based control that buffers entanglement to use BSMs more efficiently. We formalize both models under a common hardware abstraction and characterize their achievable rate-fidelity regions, yielding a benchmarking methodology that translates hardware and protocol parameters into network-level performance. Numerical evaluation quantifies the rate-fidelity tradeoffs of both models, identifies operating regions in which each architecture dominates, and shows how hardware and protocol knobs can be tuned to meet application-specific targets.