Polarization Tracking and Active Compensation Using Classical Headers in Quantum Wrapper Networking
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2604.09846 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 10 Apr 2026] Title:Polarization Tracking and Active Compensation Using Classical Headers in Quantum Wrapper Networking Authors:Gamze Gül, James van Howe, Gregory S. Kanter, Shannon G. Tan, Liam E. Beaudoin, Mehmet Berkay On, Roberto Proietti, S. J. Ben Yoo, Prem Kumar View a PDF of the paper titled Polarization Tracking and Active Compensation Using Classical Headers in Quantum Wrapper Networking, by Gamze G\"ul and 8 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quantum wrapper networking (QWN) is an emerging quantum networking protocol that wraps qubits in classical header bits to enable switching/routing, monitoring, and control without detecting the quantum signal. In this work, we encode header bits with two nonorthogonal polarization references to track and actively compensate for the changing birefringence of a 48 km deployed fiber link. Our method is analytical and deterministic, using motorized waveplates and a variable phase retarder to accurately and stably compensate the channel. We verify successful compensation by measuring the polarization stability of single photon qubits and the visibility of entangled photon pairs under both slow birefringence drift due to environmental fluctuations and large sudden changes designed to emulate those that occur during packet switching and rerouting over different fiber paths. For large, sudden changes, our compensator recovers the Stokes vector of single photons to within 10 degrees of the target state on the Poincaré sphere and restores two-photon interference visibilities to better than 79% on a deployed fiber link. Additionally, experiments monitoring long-term compensation over 44 hours show that visibilities remain above 84.5% with compensation active and degrade to below the quantum threshold of 70.7% within 4 hours of the compensator being turned off. These results add a polarization-control layer to QWN and illustrate that information-carrying headers can enable deterministic physical-layer compensation in the quantum channel over long-distance deployed fiber links. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.09846 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2604.09846v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.09846 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Gamze Gul [view email] [v1] Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:20:28 UTC (28,057 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Polarization Tracking and Active Compensation Using Classical Headers in Quantum Wrapper Networking, by Gamze G\"ul and 8 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)