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RESEARCH
       “That’s thus far been one of the key stumbling blocks to                                                  ANALYSIS
       advancing  daylight  quantum  key  distribution  in  free                                                  TRENDS
       space - if the wavelength that  your photon detector is
       sensitive  to  is  too  close  to  the  wavelength  of  the
       photons that are coming towards it from the sun, your
       detector can easily be blinded.”

       This breakthrough has benefited from the cutting-edge
       expertise  of  UK  photonics  companies.  In  partnership
       with  Covesion  Ltd,  Dr  Clerici  and  his  team  have
       engineered  a  nonlinear  crystal  made  from  lithium
       niobite, suitable for operating at 2.1 micrometers. The
       entangled  photon  pairs  are  generated  when  short
       pulses  of  light  from  a  laser  source,  provided  for  this   systems  will  need  to  operate  in  cloudy  environments
       research by Chromacity  Ltd, pass through the crystal.   and  during  the  day  as  well  as  the  night.  Longer
                                                            wavelength  photon  counting  systems  are  the  vital
       The entangled photons, which have half the energy of   technology  required  to  enable  this,  and  so  the
       their parent photon, and which are perfectly correlated   breakthrough  reported  by  our  colleagues  in  Glasgow
       in  polarization,  are  then  sent  towards  a  specially   will  underpin  commercially  viable  QKD  applications.”
       designed  superconducting  nanowire  single-photon
       detector.                                            The  paper,  titled  ‘Two-photon  Quantum  Interference
                                                            and  Entanglement at 2.1  μm’, is published in Science
       Dr  Adetunmise  Dada,  Research  Associate  at  the   Advances. Researchers from the University of Glasgow
       University  of  Glasgow,  added:  “Along  with  our   collaborated  with  colleagues  from  the  Universities  of
       collaborators in academia and industry, we’ve found a   Southampton  and  Strathclyde  in  the  UK,  Kobe
       way to reliably create high-quality paired photons at a   University and the National Institute of Information and
       new  wavelength,  making  them  well-suited  to  use  in   Communications in Japan, Leibniz University Hannover
       quantum communications. Our next step is to take our   in  Germany,  Covesion  Ltd  and  Chromacity  Ltd.
       system out of the lab and start to test it under realistic
       outdoor conditions. It’s an  exciting stage to be at and   The research was supported by funding from Innovate
       we’re  looking  forward  to  seeing  where  we  can  take  it   UK,  UKRI,  EPSRC,  the  Royal  Society,  Leverhulme
       from here.”                                          Trust,  Royal  Academy  of  Engineering,  the  European
                                                            Research  Council,  MEXT  (Japan)  and  BMBF
       Andy Vick, Head of Disruptive Space Technologies at   (Germany). (Source: University of Glasgow) ◊
       UK’s  RAL  Space  and  not  involved  in  the  research,
       commented:  “Commercial  quantum  key  distribution                                    By MediaBUZZ

































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