title: The photon pair source that survived a rocket explosion.
abstract: We report on the performance of a compact photon pair source that was recovered intact from a failed space launch. The source had been embedded in a nanosatellite and was designed to perform pathfinder experiments leading to global quantum communication networks using spacecraft. Despite the launch vehicle explosion soon after takeoff, the nanosatellite was successfully retrieved from the accident site and the source within it was found to be fully operational. We describe the assembly technique for the rugged source. Post-recovery data is compared to baseline measurements collected before the launch attempt and no degradation in brightness or polarization correlation was observed. The survival of the source through an extreme environment provides strong evidence that it is possible to engineer rugged quantum optical systems.
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: Yue Chuan
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Tan
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: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.
authors.forename: Kadir
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Durak
authors.affiliation: Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Block S15, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore.|Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117551 Singapore.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ling