A multicast scheme based on fidelity metrics in quantum networks is proposed in this paper. First of all, according to the fidelity of copies in an asymmetric mechanism of 1→1 + 1 + 1 + 1 which is derived, the way of information transmission in the quantum networks is defined: one is one-to-one transmission based on the teleportation and the other is one-to-many lossy transmission based on quantum cloning mechanism. Second, in a specified quantum network which is a connected graph, a source node can randomly assign multicast group members. Then, with constraints of the number of replicas and the maximum number of hops of the shortest path, an optimal multicast tree is constructed to obtain maximum fidelity. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed scheme can select the optimal path from the source node to the multicast members for the specified quantum network. With the increase of multicast group members, the average value of information fidelity obtained by all members decreases. Compared with the multicast tree constructed by the KMB algorithm, which is used to construct the Steiner tree in classical communication, the proposed schemes make the information fidelity obtained by multicast group members improve significantly.INDEX TERMS Multicast tree, quantum cloning mechanism, fidelity, multicast group, quantum networks.

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