  We describe a quantum repeater protocol for long-distance quantum
communication. In this scheme, entanglement is created between qubits at
intermediate stations of the channel by using a weak dispersive light-matter
interaction and distributing the outgoing bright coherent light pulses among
the stations. Noisy entangled pairs of electronic spin are then prepared with
high success probability via homodyne detection and postselection. The local
gates for entanglement purification and swapping are deterministic and
measurement-free, based upon the same coherent-light resources and weak
interactions as for the initial entanglement distribution. Finally, the
entanglement is stored in a nuclear-spin-based quantum memory. With our system,
qubit-communication rates approaching 100 Hz over 1280 km with fidelities near
99% are possible for reasonable local gate errors.
