Quantum Technologies are regarded as high-priority and strategic at the European Space Agency.
The presentation will sketch how quantum technologies development activities are coordinated and supported across the different ESA Directorates and programmes.
In recent years, significant effort has been focused on developing quantum technologies for use ‘in the field’ resulting in a remarkable reduction in SWaP for portable quantum-based apparatus. The use of quantum devices in space poses yet more engineering challenges over terrestrial devices. I will present some of these challenges and discuss design considerations to overcome them, and improve...
A discussion on the engineering challenges of making electronic systems work reliably in the space environment, and the wide range of options and approaches that can be used to mitigate them for different styles of mission.
We will provide an overview of qtlabs' activities in space-based QKD systems. Building on pioneering work in long-distance free-space QKD and performing down links from a quantum satellite, qtlabs has developed expertise and products for space QKD over the last years. This concerns development of quantum sources for space, mission design and QKD protocols, as well as optical ground stations....
This presentation will address current research and development of a low-SWaP laser-cooled single Sr+ ion clock system focused on space clock applications
There has been recent dramatic global investment in quantum technologies, which now often harness laser-cooled atom traps. Such traps yield orders of magnitude longer measurement times and concomitant accuracy enhancements promised within the small physical footprint already demonstrated in warm atomic systems. Six-beam magneto-optical traps (MOTs) are ubiquitous in cold atomic physics...
We present a cold-atom pulsed optically pumped (POP) microwave atomic clock based on an additively manufactured loop-gap-resonator microwave cavity and grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT). Additive manufacturing allows for almost arbitrary electrode geometries, more difficult to produce with traditional manufacturing. This approach is also highly scalable and requires minimal assembly. The use...
To gain better understanding of the upper atmospheric dynamics requires more accurate determination of the mass density distribution in the thermosphere. Improved measurements of drag, by means of satellite accelerometery, can be used to more precisely determine this distribution. In addition, atmospheric drag in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is particularly of interest for climate modelling, weather...
Poster will give an overview of three current projects undergoing at Fraunhofer CAP. One project is based on satellite based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) encoded communication to be packaged in a compact, robust and commercially-viable form. More details in a second project on photon entanglement with different sources for space applications. Finally, a quick overview of the project in...
The decoy state technique in quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proven as the most optimal strategy to counter photon number splitting (PNS) attacks. In the asymptotic limit of running the experiment an infinite time, it was shown that 2-decoy outperforms 1-decoy protocol. However, it was also showed that 1-decoy reached higher key rates than 2-decoy for finite block sizes except for...
The development of cubic optical cavities for high TRL low SWaP stabilization of laser light for applications in the space sector, such as fundamental physics, Earth observation and future navigation, will be presented.
In the drive to develop cold-atom quantum technologies, compact vacuum systems are key to enabling quantum sensing for real world applications. These vacuum systems not only have to be reduced in size, weight, and power compared to their traditional counterparts, but face other challenges.
Eliminating active pumping addresses both size and power, but introduces the issue of helium gas...
Recent developments in space quantum communications have highlighted the role robust quantum sources onboard small satellites and CubeSats could play in enabling trustless QKD and helping to implement a global quantum communication network. A major step in this direction would be to perform satellite-to-ground QKD using entanglement-based protocols such as BBM92 where correlations remove the...
We will discuss a method based on coincidence detection to increase the key rate in a prepare and measure protocol. The proposed protocol provides higher key rate compared to the most popular BB84 and Decoy State QKD protocols.
We study the security of prepare-and-measure satellite-based quantum key distribution (QKD) in restricted eavesdropping scenarios where Eve has limited access to the transmitted signal by Alice. An artefact of such an assumption is the possibility of having bypass channels, those which are not accessible to Eve, but may not necessarily be characterized by the users either. This creates...
