title: Distributing entanglement and single photons through an intra-city, free-space quantum channel.
abstract: We have distributed entangled photons directly through the atmosphere to a receiver station 7.8 km away over the city of Vienna, Austria at night. Detection of one photon from our entangled pairs constitutes a triggered single photon source from the sender. With no direct time-stable connection, the two stations found coincidence counts in the detection events by calculating the cross-correlation of locally-recorded time stamps shared over a public internet channel. For this experiment, our quantum channel was maintained for a total of 40 minutes during which time a coincidence lock found approximately 60000 coincident detection events. The polarization correlations in those events yielded a Bell parameter, S=2.27+/-0.019, which violates the CHSH-Bell inequality by 14 standard deviations. This result is promising for entanglement-based freespace quantum communication in high-density urban areas. It is also encouraging for optical quantum communication between ground stations and satellites since the length of our free-space link exceeds the atmospheric equivalent.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Resch
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindenthal
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Blauensteiner
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Böhm
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fedrizzi
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kurtsiefer
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Poppe
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schmitt-Manderbach
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taraba
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ursin
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Walther
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Weier
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Weinfurter
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zeilinger