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Viewpoint: Sending Quantum Messages Through Space

Eleni Diamanti

Published Jul 20, 2015• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Fragile photon states useful for quantum communication can be faithfully transmitted and distinguished over a link between an orbiting satellite and a telescope on Earth.

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Extending quantum communication to space environments would enable us to perform fundamental experiments on quantum physics as well as applications of quantum information at planetary and interplanetary scales. Here, we report on the first experimental study of the conditions for the implementation of the single-photon exchange between a satellite and an Earth-based station. We built an experiment that mimics a single photon source on a satellite, exploiting the telescope at the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory of the Italian Space Agency to detect the transmitted photons. Weak laser pulses, emitted by the ground-based station, are directed toward a satellite equipped with cube-corner retroreflectors. These reflect a small portion of the pulse, with an average of less-than-one photon per pulse directed to our receiver, as required for faint-pulse quantum communication. We were able to detect returns from satellite Ajisai, a low-Earth orbit geodetic satellite, whose orbit has a perigee height of 1485 km.
Geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) satellites can extend the transmission distance of the quantum states and the intercrossing time between the satellites and the ground, which will greatly promote the application spatial scale of quantum communications. In this work we report the first experimental test of transmission of photonic polarization states from a GEO SJ-20 satellite at more than 36,000 km distance to the Li-jiang ground station at Yun-nan Observatory. The test equipment carried on the satellite can send four kinds of photonic polarization states at 50 MHz pulse frequency. A 1.76 m telescope and related optical system in the ground station are used to receive the photonic polarization states, and then these polarization states are probed by the superconducting nanowire single photon detector. The test results show that the optical attenuation between the GEO satellite and the ground station is 100 ˜ 110 dB and the channel bit error rate is 2%–8%, which meet the security criteria of quantum key distribution and quantum secure direct communication.
Quantum communication (QC), namely, the faithful transmission of generic quantum states, is a key ingredient of quantum information science.Here we demonstrate QC with polarization encoding from space to ground by exploiting satellite corner cube retroreflectors as quantum transmitters in orbit and the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory of the Italian Space Agency in Matera, Italy, as a quantum receiver.The quantum bit error ratio (QBER) has been kept steadily low to a level suitable for several quantum information protocols, as the violation of Bell inequalities or quantum key distribution (QKD).Indeed, by taking data from different satellites, we demonstrate an average value of QBER ¼ 4.6% for a total link duration of 85 s.The mean photon number per pulse μ sat leaving the satellites was estimated to be of the order of one.In addition, we propose a fully operational satellite QKD system by exploiting our communication scheme with orbiting retroreflectors equipped with a modulator, a very compact payload.Our scheme paves the way toward the implementation of a QC worldwide network leveraging existing receivers.