CQT-led team contributes feature to Optics and Photonics News

CQT PI Alexander Ling and his collaborators were invited to write about the group’s work on quantum optics for launch into space.

Click the image to download a PDF of "Quantum Optics for Space Platforms", Optics and Photonics News 23, 42 (2012)
© 2012 The Optical Society.

CQT Principal Investigator Alexander Ling and his collaborators have written a feature for the more than 30,000 readers of Optics and Photonics News (OPN), a monthly magazine distributed to members of the Optical Society of America.

Alexander and his coauthors were invited to write for OPN about CQT's Small Photon-Entangling Quantum System (SPEQS). The group is designing SPEQS for launch on a small satellite in 2013, to test technology that could be used to build a global quantum communication network. Entangled photons can enable secure communication, an application known as quantum cryptography.

The article is written by Alexander, who is an Assistant Professor in the National University of Singapore as well as a CQT PI, former CQT Research Assistant William Morong, who has since started his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, and collaborator Daniel Oi from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK.

The authors describe both their scientific vision and the technical challenges of compressing the optics into the space allowed on the CubeSat standard they are working with — the constraints include a 300ml size limit and 300g mass limit. They also report that the package sailed through its first high-altitude tests. Collaborators at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University are designing the satellite into which SPEQS will be installed.

The article is "Quantum Optics for Space Platforms", Optics and Photonics News 23, 42 (2012), available online on the OPN website for subscribers, and as a PDF here.

The estimated readership of OPN includes subscribers, readers of passed-on magazines and digital viewers.