Design and Packaging of a Compact Entangled-Photon Source for Space Quantum Key Distribution

摘要

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) directly exploits the quantum phenomenon of entanglement to allow the securesharing of a cryptographic key for information encoding. The current generation of QKD devices typically operate overdedicated and expensive private ‘dark fiber’ networks, where they are limited in transmission range to 200-300km due tothe lack of quantum repeaters. This paper is concerned with an alternative approach that can lift this range limit byexploiting QKD over free-space links between satellites. Typically, commercial QKD systems rely on phase encoding ofinformation on single photons, and more recently on continuously variable schemes with more powerful lasers.However, these protocols are not suitable for communications through atmosphere. On the other hand, QKD bypolarization-entanglement holds great promise for satellite-based QKD encoded communications links if the entangledphotonsource can be packaged in a compact, robust and commercially-viable form. This paper will describe thedevelopment and packaging of an entangled-photon source utilizing space-qualified telecoms packaging techniques,resulting in a compact device that targets satellite deployment. The key design choices that impact performance in aspace environment will be discussed and the results of device characterization in the laboratory environment will beshared.