Long-range distribution of multiphoton entanglement

We show that a long-distance quantum communication can be based on multiphoton bipartite entanglement and photon-number-resolved detection, the resources provided by the current quantum-photonic technology. The protocol is robust to high transmission losses and offers near-maximally entangled states in realistic implementations. It can be realized in a delayed-choice scheme and it allows one to perform loophole-free Bell tests. The schema discussed can be employed as a source of entanglement for e.g. establishing an Earth-to-space quantum channel, quantum metrology and quantum key distribution.