Type-I and Type-II Fusion Protocols for Weighted Graph States

Weighted graph states extend standard graph states by associating phases with entangling edges, and may serve as resources for measurement-based quantum computation. We analyze how the two main fusion operations, Type-I and type-II, act on weighted graph states. Type-I fusion operates identically to the unweighted case, merging two one-dimensional weighted graphs, while preserving edge weights and success probabilities. In addition, the pool of two-qubit weighted graph states can be generated easily from Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states or Bell pairs. In contrast, type-II fusion requires a logical qubit, which can be formed only for specific weight configurations, and with a success probability below one-half. When successful, it fuses the states correctly, but its failure outcomes destroy the structure of the graphs, removing the good-failure feature known from ordinary graph states. These two obstacles can be overcome by using extra qubits and π weights in the one-dimensional weighted graph states that are being fused, which enables scalability. We compute the change in the entanglement entropy of the resulting link due to the fused states being weighted graph states (for generalized fusion), and classify the resulting states of a general non-Bell projection. These results define the practical limits of the fusion-based construction of weighted graph states. To our knowledge, this is the first time that fusion processes have been used to construct weighted graph states.