Loss-Resilient Quantum Networking with Dicke Entanglement

Multipartite entanglement can endow a quantum network with capabilities unavailable classically, yet their evolution under progressively reduced physical and informational access remains largely unexplored. Here we realize the first eight-photon half-excitation Dicke state, with a fidelity of 0.922(11), and use it to implement two distinct network tasks: open-destination teleportation and quantum telecloning. An unknown state can be teleported from one agent to any of seven remote agents with fidelities of 0.926(7)-0.941(6), while seven approximate clones are distributed with a fidelity of 0.713(3), close to the optimal value of 5/7. The protocol remains above the classical limit under imperfect photon detection, transmission loss and missing information from participating agents, and outperforms the corresponding GHZ benchmarks. As fewer agents contribute, the teleportation fidelity falls through a stepwise hierarchy whose two extremes recover open-destination teleportation and optimal telecloning, connecting both tasks within a single operational framework. These results establish Dicke entanglement as a promising architecture for loss-resilient quantum networks, opening a route towards quantum technologies that retain useful functionality under realistic operating conditions.