Direct and full-scale experimental verifications towards ground–satellite quantum key distribution

By Jian-Yu Wang, Bin Yang, Shengkai Liao, L. Zhang, Qi Shen, Xiaofang Hu, Jincai Wu, Shiji Yang, Hao Jiang, yan-lin tang and 13 more. Nature Photonics, 2012

311 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides the only intrinsically unconditional secure method for communication based on the principle of quantum mechanics. Compared with fibre-based demonstrations, free-space links could provide the most appealing solution for communication over much larger distances. Despite significant efforts, all realizations to date rely on stationary sites. Experimental verifications are therefore extremely crucial for applications to a typical low Earth orbit satellite. To achieve direct and full-scale verifications of our set-up, we have carried out three independent experiments with a decoy-state QKD system, and overcome all conditions. The system is operated on a moving platform (using a turntable), on a floating platform (using a hot-air balloon), and with a high-loss channel to demonstrate performances under conditions of rapid motion, attitude change, vibration, random movement of satellites, and a high-loss regime. The experiments address wide ranges of all leading parameters relevant to low Earth orbit satellites. Our results pave the way towards ground–satellite QKD and a global quantum communication network. Full-scale verifications for establishing quantum cryptography communication via satellites are reported. Three independent experiments using a hot-air balloon are performed: on a rapidly moving platform over a distance of 40 km, on a floating platform over a distance of 20 km, and over 96 km in air with a huge loss.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/055e08ad542f86c65e65294f47ce4c0ed76b2b2b

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Citations in the corpus

Secure quantum key distribution (2014, methodology): “Indeed, a preliminary QKD experiment be-tween ground and a hot-air balloon has been performed recently [22]; see also [23].”
Satellite-to-ground quantum-limited communication using a 50-kg-class microsatellite (2017, background): “There have been significant efforts on developing the basic technologies for QKD in space, namely, terrestrial free-space quantum-communications [11,12-14], demonstrations with moving terminals to emulate the motion of a satellite [15,16], experiments using orbiting objects such as passive corner-re”
Progress in satellite quantum key distribution (2017, unknown): “[116] Verification of pointing, acquisition and tracking.”