Losses limit the maximum distance of ground based quantum communication to « 400 km. Satellites overcome this limitation. Till date there have been numerous feasibility studies and two successful, large-scale quantum communications satellite missions. Achieving similar performance with a tiny, low-cost CubeSat in the uplink scenario is a major challenge. Here we present a feasibility study for a fully functional 3U-CubeSat-based quantum receiver. The advantage of this scheme is twofold: first, the majority of complex and critical equipment is ground based; second, one satellite design is compatible with a variety of quantum optical experiments. We provide a complete link loss analysis, count rate estimations and preliminary design. Further we discuss solutions to key problems such as satellite pointing errors and measurement/detection issues. Using current technology, we show that the CubeSat is feasible and can be used to violate a Bell-like inequality over a free-space distance of 500 km.


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    Title :

    Quantum communications uplink to a 3U CubeSat


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2017-11-01


    Size :

    468626 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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