QUANTA: Quantum Communications over Atmospheric Channels Aided by Detector Arrays
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Abstract
Future-proof secure communication enabled by quantum cryptography offers proven resilience and security across various industrial sectors, making it of utmost national importance. The UK National Quantum Strategy envisions achieving quantum advantage at scale by 2035, reaching a trillion quantum operations, which could undermine the classical cryptographic techniques currently used to secure the internet. This underscores the significance of quantum-key distribution (QKD) in achieving provable security in the presence of future quantum computing-enabled attackers. The existing limitations on the key generation rate, reliability, and cost of the current QKD technology necessitates faster, more reliable, and more practical QKD solutions.
QUANTA’s vision is to produce a significant step change in the design and performance of practical QKD systems. In contrast to current QKD receivers, which use individual single-photon detectors (SPDs) to measure qubits, QUANTA will employ SPD arrays to exploit their scalable spatial degrees of freedom. This enables QUANTA's receivers to support additional functionalities beyond qubit detection, such as wavefront sensing, spatial beam tracking, multiplexing, noise cancellation, and dead-time mitigation. Thus, a range of advancements can be achieved from increasing resilience to the turbulence effect in atmospheric QKD links deployed on terrestrial or satellite platforms to enhance the key generation rate of low-cost wireless QKD systems.
QUANTA’s vision is to produce a significant step change in the design and performance of practical QKD systems. In contrast to current QKD receivers, which use individual single-photon detectors (SPDs) to measure qubits, QUANTA will employ SPD arrays to exploit their scalable spatial degrees of freedom. This enables QUANTA's receivers to support additional functionalities beyond qubit detection, such as wavefront sensing, spatial beam tracking, multiplexing, noise cancellation, and dead-time mitigation. Thus, a range of advancements can be achieved from increasing resilience to the turbulence effect in atmospheric QKD links deployed on terrestrial or satellite platforms to enhance the key generation rate of low-cost wireless QKD systems.