Scalable and noise-robust communication advantage of multipartite quantum entanglement

Abstract

Distributed computing, involving multiple servers collaborating on designated computations, faces a critical challenge in optimizing inter-server communication -- an issue central to the study of communication complexity. Quantum resources offer advantages over classical methods in addressing this challenge. In this work, we investigate a distributed computing scenario with multiple senders and a single receiver, establishing a scalable advantage of multipartite quantum entanglement in mitigating communication complexity. Specifically, we demonstrate that when the receiver and the senders share a multi-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state -- a quintessential form of genuine multipartite entanglement -- certain global functions of the distributed inputs can be computed with only one bit of classical communication from each sender. In contrast, without entanglement, two bits of communication are required from all but one sender. Consequently, quantum entanglement reduces communication overhead by (n-1) bits for n senders, allowing for arbitrary scaling with an increasing number of senders. We also show that the entanglement-based protocol exhibits significant robustness under white noise, thereby establishing the potential for experimental realization of this novel quantum advantage.