Distributing entangled pairs is a fundamental operation required for many quantum information science and technology tasks. In a general entanglement distribution scheme, a photonic pulse is used to entangle a pair of remote quantum memories. Most applications require multiple entangled pairs between remote users, which in turn necessitates several photonic pulses (single photons) being sent through the channel connecting those users. Here we present an entanglement distribution scheme using only a single photonic pulse to entangle an arbitrary number of remote quantum memories. As a consequence the spatial temporal resources are dramatically reduced. We show how this approach can be simultaneously combined with an entanglement purification protocol to generate even higher fidelity entangled pairs. The combined approach is faster to generate those high quality pairs and requires less resources in terms of both matter qubits and photons consumed. To estimate the efficiency of our scheme we derive a normalized rate taking into account the raw rate at which the users can generate purified entangled pairs divided by the total resources used. We compare the efficiency of our system with the Deutsch protocol in which the entangled pairs have been created in a traditional way. Our scheme outperforms this approach both in terms of generation rate and resources required. Finally we show how our approach can be extended to more general error correction and detection schemes with higher normalized generation rates naturally occurring.

11 pages, 7 figures