  Reliable preparation of entanglement between distant systems is an
outstanding problem in quantum information science and quantum communication.
In practice, this has to be accomplished via noisy channels (such as optical
fibers) that generally result in exponential attenuation of quantum signals at
large distances. A special class of quantum error correction protocols--quantum
repeater protocols--can be used to overcome such losses. In this work, we
introduce a method for systematically optimizing existing protocols and
developing new, more efficient protocols. Our approach makes use of a dynamic
programming-based searching algorithm, the complexity of which scales only
polynomially with the communication distance, letting us efficiently determine
near-optimal solutions. We find significant improvements in both the speed and
the final state fidelity for preparing long distance entangled states.
