Proposal for the distribution of multiphoton entanglement with optimal rate-distance scaling

We propose a protocol to perform long-range distribution of near-maximally entangled multiphoton states, allowing versatile applications such as quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum metrology which can provide alternatives to state-of-the-art protocols. Our scheme uses resources available within the current integrated quantum photonic technology: squeezed vacuum states and photon-number-resolving detectors. The distributed entanglement can be certified by Bell tests which have the potential to be loophole free, and may be directly used in well-established QKD protocols. Generally, this provides measurement-device-independent levels of security, which may be upgraded to fully device-independent security if the Bell test is loophole free. In both cases, the protocol is robust to extremely high transmission losses, matching the optimal O(√η) scaling of key rate with channel transmittance.