Improved Simulation of Asynchronous Entanglement Distribution in Noisy Quantum Networks

This work introduces a lightweight simulation framework for evaluating asynchronous entanglement distribution protocols under realistic error models. We focus on two contemporary protocols: sequential, where entanglement is established one node at a time, and parallel, where all nodes attempt to generate entanglement simultaneously. We evaluate the performance of each protocol using two key metrics: the fidelity of distributed entangled states, and the hashing rate, a measure of entanglement efficiency. These metrics are compared between both protocols across a range of network sizes and noise parameters. We demonstrate that the parallel protocol consistently outperforms the sequential, particularly in the hashing rate metric due to reduced runtime, suggesting that parallel protocols are a strong candidate for a realizable quantum Internet. Our framework offers an accessible and scalable tool for evaluating entanglement distribution strategies, by reducing the simulation of complex quantum processes to simple memory time calculations.