  We introduce a feasible scheme to produce high-rate long-distance
entanglement which uses hybrid entanglement (HE) between continuous variables
(CV) and discrete variables (DV). We show that HE can effectively remove the
experimental limitations of existing CV and DV systems to produce long range
entanglement. We benchmark the resulting DV entangled states using an
entanglement-based quantum key distribution (EB-QKD) protocol. We show that,
using HE states, EB-QKD is possible with standard telecommunication fibers for
300 km. The key idea is using the CV part, which can be adjusted to be robust
against photon losses, for increasing the transmission distance, while using
the DV part for achieving high secure key rates. Our results point out that HE
states provide a clear advantage for practical long-distance and high-rate
entanglement generation that may lead to further applications in quantum
information processing.
