title: Near-space flight of a correlated photon system.
abstract: We report the successful test flight of a device for generating and monitoring correlated photon pairs under near-space conditions up to 35.5 km altitude. Data from ground based qualification tests and the high altitude experiment demonstrate that the device continues to operate even under harsh environmental conditions. The design of the rugged, compact and power-efficient photon pair system is presented. This design enables autonomous photon pair systems to be deployed on low-resource platforms such as nanosatellites hosting remote nodes of a quantum key distribution network. These results pave the way for tests of entangled photon technology in low earth orbit.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Zhongkan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Rakhitha
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chandrasekara
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Yau Yong
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Sean
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Cliff
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Kantonsschule Sursee, Moosgasse 11, CH-6210 Sursee, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wildfeuer
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ling