  The architecture proposed by Duan, Lukin, Cirac, and Zoller (DLCZ) for
long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles is analyzed. Its
fidelity and throughput in entanglement distribution, entanglement swapping,
and quantum teleportation is derived within a framework that accounts for
multiple excitations in the ensembles as well as loss and asymmetries in the
channel. The DLCZ performance metrics that are obtained are compared to the
corresponding results for the trapped-atom quantum communication architecture
that has been proposed by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and Northwestern University (MIT/NU). Both systems are found to be capable of
high-fidelity entanglement distribution. However, the DLCZ scheme only provides
conditional teleportation and repeater operation, whereas the MIT/NU
architecture affords full Bell-state measurements on its trapped atoms.
Moreover, it is shown that achieving unity conditional fidelity in DLCZ
teleportation and repeater operation requires ideal photon-number resolving
detectors. The maximum conditional fidelities for DLCZ teleportation and
repeater operation that can be realized with non-resolving detectors are 1/2
and 2/3, respectively.
