Operational Collapse Region in Repeaterless Loss-Dephasing Quantum Channels

The distribution of entangled photon pairs over standard optical fiber is a fundamental requirement for the realization of the quantum internet. However, real-world deployment is severely bottlenecked by the interplay of amplitude damping (photon loss) and phase noise (birefringence). In this paper, we numerically investigate the degradation of dual-rail polarization entanglement in telecom C-band fiber links. We demonstrate a critical disparity between the physical survival of quantum correlations and their practical utility in standard communication protocols. By evaluating the unconditional logarithmic negativity against the post-selected teleportation fidelity, we identify a distinct ``operational collapse region'' -- a distance window where the channel retains true quantum entanglement, yet standard coincidence-based detection architectures fail to provide any advantage over classical strategies. Furthermore, we reveal that the width of this inaccessible region exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on the phase noise rate, implying that simply minimizing fiber dephasing does not necessarily optimize the operational efficiency of the network. These findings provide vital guidelines for the design of practical quantum communication links.

Source: arXiv:2607.07603v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.07603v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.07603v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.07603v1