Heisenberg spin bus as a robust transmission line for quantum-state transfer

We study quantum-state transfer (QST) through a strongly coupled antiferromagnetic spin chain (acting as a spin bus), between weakly coupled external qubits. By treating the weak coupling as a perturbation, we find that QST is enabled specifically by the second-order terms in the perturbative expansion. We show that QST is robust against disorder in the couplings, either within the bus or to the external qubits. We find that the protocol works when the qubits are attached to any node on an even-size bus or to the antiferromagnetic nodes on an odd-size bus. The optimal time for QST is found to depend nonmonotonically on qubit separation.