Piotr KOLENDERSKI
Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Wydział Fizyki, Astronomii i Informatyki Stosowanej, Grudziądzka 5, 87-100 Toruń
The last decades of the 20th century endowed us with experimental tools that can push the boundaries of our understanding of the surrounding world farther than ever before. Now, in the 21st century, it is possible to generate, control, and detect multiple features of single and entangled particles, providing strong grounds for today’s and future technologies. It is now clear that quantum technology has great potential to enable what was never possible before.
Quantum Communication (QC) technology has already been present on the market for several years thanks to a number of companies offering various commercial fiber-based quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. However, for QC to be ultimately useful, the existing schemes must allow for truly global applications. There are international programs aiming at satellite-based QC. Canada’s QEYSSat project [1] aims to develop a very small satellite, which will be economically attractive and have the potential to be commercialized and scaled up to a constellation. The main part of the project is to demonstrate uplink communication using an optical ground station and an entangled photon pair source. I will talk about a prototype of such a generator [2].
Similar technology can be used to generate quantum light for (quantum) microscopy. Controlled interaction of a single particle of matter with a single photon is the essence of fundamental experiments testing the theory of electronic structure of atomic systems or, in general, quantum electrodynamics. It is also a building block of quantum memories – devices allowing the storage and reliable retrieval of quantum states. The second part of my talk will be devoted to experiments on photon-matter interaction [3], where a sample is illuminated with a single photon [4].
References
[1] A. Scott, T. Jennewein, J. Cain, I. D'Souza, B. Higgins, D. Hudson, H. Podmore, W. Soh, "The QEYSSAT mission: on-orbit demonstration of secure optical communications network technologies," Proc. SPIE 11532, Environmental Effects on Light Propagation and Adaptive Systems III, 115320H (20 September 2020)
[2] J. Szlachetka, K. Joarder, P. Kolenderski; Ultrabright source of non-degenerate polarization-entangled photon pairs based on off-the-shelf polarization optics. Appl. Phys. Lett. 123 (2023), 144001
[3] M. Gieysztor, M. Misiaszek-Schreyner, Joscelyn van der Veen, Wojciech Gawlik, Fedor Jelezko, P. Kolenderski "Interaction of a heralded single photon with nitrogen-vacancy centers in a diamond" Opt. Express 29 (2021), 564-570
[4] M. Misiaszek-Schreyner, Alexander Divochiy, Yury Vakhtomin, Pavel Morozov, Konstantin Smirnov, Philipp Zolotov, P. Kolenderski "Single photon detection system for visible and infrared spectrum range" Opt. Lett. 43 (2018), 6085-6088