Latest Key Expe­ri­ment of the QuN­ET Initia­ti­ve suc­cessful­ly com­ple­ted

Results of the Flight Expe­ri­ment pave the Way for the Deve­lo­p­ment of Future Quan­tum Net­works:

The QuN­ET initia­ti­ve, which deve­lo­ps tech­no­lo­gies for quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, suc­cessful­ly com­ple­ted its latest key expe­ri­ment in mid-Octo­ber. As part of a flight expe­ri­ment bet­ween Ober­pfaf­fen­ho­fen and Erlan­gen, a rese­arch air­craft (model: Dor­nier 228) ope­ra­ted by the Deut­sche Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt (DLR) ser­ved as a mobi­le node within a Quan­tum Net­work. On board were various Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Expe­ri­ments from the pro­ject part­ners. The cen­tral expe­ri­ment invol­ved cou­pling a fly­ing qubit to the ion trap at the Max-Planck-Insti­tut für die Phy­sik des Lichts (MPL) in Erlan­gen. The opti­cal ground sta­ti­on – a mobi­le con­tai­ner with an inte­gra­ted recei­ving ter­mi­nal, cal­led QuBUS – was posi­tio­ned out­doors and trans­mit­ted the Quan­tum Sta­tes via fiber optics into the institute’s buil­ding. A spe­cia­li­zed track­ing sys­tem ensu­red that the recei­ving ter­mi­nal could con­ti­nuous­ly fol­low the aircraft’s move­ment and main­tain a sta­ble opti­cal con­nec­tion. Com­pen­sa­ting for atmo­sphe­ric tur­bu­lence and dis­tur­ban­ces posed a tech­ni­cal chall­enge, as did hand­ling sin­gle pho­tons, who­se gene­ra­ti­on, detec­tion, and wave­length tuning requi­re the hig­hest pre­cis­i­on.
 
During the cour­se of the expe­ri­ment, the rese­ar­chers were able to mea­su­re seve­ral dif­fe­rent Quan­tum Chan­nels bet­ween the air­craft and the ground sta­ti­on, trans­mit pho­tons to an ion trap, and test new tech­no­lo­gies for Quan­tum Key Dis­tri­bu­ti­on (QKD). QKD is con­side­red a key tech­no­lo­gy for the quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on of the future, as it enables the pro­tec­tion of cri­ti­cal infra­struc­tures and sen­si­ti­ve data even in the age of powerful Quan­tum Com­pu­ters. The expe­ri­ment invol­ved rese­ar­chers from the DLR, Max-Planck-Insti­tuts für die Phy­sik des Lichts (MPL), the Fried­rich-Alex­an­der-Uni­ver­si­tät Erlan­gen-Nürn­berg (FAU), as well as the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tu­tes Ange­wand­te Optik und Fein­me­cha­nik (IOF) in Jena and Nach­rich­ten­tech­nik, Hein­rich-Hertz-Insti­tut (HHI), in Ber­lin.
 
The tech­no­lo­gies demons­tra­ted during the flight expe­ri­ment repre­sent an important step toward Future Quan­tum Net­works. To bridge long distances, satel­li­tes, air­craft, and other mobi­le plat­forms are expec­ted to ser­ve as key com­pon­ents of such net­works in the future. Click here for more infor­ma­ti­on about the expe­ri­ment.