Hannover 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 25: Quantum information: Quantum communication II
Q 25.4: Vortrag
Dienstag, 19. März 2013, 11:45–12:00, E 214
Air to Ground Quantum Key Distribution — •Markus Rau1, Sebastian Nauerth1, Florian Moll2, Christian Fuchs2, Joachim Horwath2, Stefan Frick1, and Harald Weinfurter1,3 — 1Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München — 2Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., Weßling — 3Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, München
Quantum key distribution provides a whole new level of information security. However for long range communication, links via satellites or other airborne systems are necessary. Here we report on an experiment combining recent advances in classical and in quantum optical technologies to demonstrate the feasibility of quantum key distribution from an airplane to ground. Major challenges solved in this experiment are the higher pointing requirements compared to classical free-space communication and the integration of the QKD hardware into an existing communication system, including the development of a precise polarization compensation technique to account for the relative rotations of airborne and ground station qubit encoding bases.
The flight tests have been performed linking the optical ground station of the DLR Oberpfaffenhofen with a Donier 228 airplane flying at a distance of 20 km at 290 km/h. The achieved key rate of 145 bits/s with a quantum bit error rate of 4.8 % proves that a BB84 key exchange can be performed with a fast moving airborne platform. Given the high angular speed our demonstration also clearly proves the feasibility of QKD to satellites, high altitude platforms or intercontinental planes.