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The Space Entanglement and Annealing QUantum Experiment integrated on the MISSE-20 platform for launch to the ISS on SpaceX-31.
HOUSTON—A pair of experiments recently launched to the International Space Station (ISS) are intended to enable more rapid and secure space quantum communications.
The Space Entanglement and Annealing Quantum Experiment (Seaque) and a laser “self-heal” technology were lofted Nov. 4 aboard SpaceX’s 31st NASA-contracted cargo resupply mission to the seven-person orbital lab. They were robotically installed on an external research platform on the orbital lab’s starboard solar power truss.
The demonstration’s multiple objectives include creating and validating new technologies for improving communications between quantum computers, including communications across significant distances. On Earth that could lead to connecting quantum computer networks separated by hundreds to thousands of miles. In space, demonstrated advances could lead to quantum cloud computing and the self-healing of the transmission and reception components subjected to damage from space radiation as well as communications over vast distances.
“Seaque will demonstrate a new and never-before-flown entanglement source based on integrated optics,” says Paul Kwiat, the project’s principal investigator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory-provided explainer. “Such a source is inherently much smaller, more robust, and more efficient at producing photon pairs than the bulk optic entanglement sources used in previous space experiments.”
As the demonstration progresses, Seaque seeks to prove the viability of technologies meant to enable orbital computing nodes to securely connect widely separated quantum transmitters and receivers.
“To do that, these nodes will need to produce and detect pairs of entangled photons. Eventually, transmitting such photons to quantum computers on the ground could provide the foundation for quantum cloud computing—the means to exchange and process quantum data regardless of where the computers are located,” the JPL explainer says.
Previous space-based experiments with quantum technologies have turned to “bulk optics” to focus their lights on specialized crystals to generate the entangled photons required for communications. In a first, Seaque turns to a microscopic structure called a waveguide to direct the photon transmission with minimal loss to the quantum state of the photons.
Future operations will require detectors with extreme sensitivity to receive single photon quantum signals from the ground. Over time, the detectors will be subject to damage from space radiation. Though the Seaque demonstration is not attempting to detect signals from Earth, the hardware includes a detector that counts the photon generation.
As part of the demonstration, Seaque is equipped with a laser for periodic “self-heal” repairs to radiation-induced damage that impairs photon generation.
The Seaque collaboration includes the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada; the National University of Singapore; AdvR, Inc., of Bozeman, Montana; and Nanoracks LLC, of Houston.
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