QKD Satellite Ground-Station PhD Proposal

2020年，英国提出了一项为英国长途量子密钥分发网络建立卫星星座的建议[1]，以此作为国家安全能力，这是因为人们越来越需要为后量子安全做好准备。为此，一队卫星信号源将下行连接到一系列近红外光学地面站。该小组的目标是开发实现这一目标的技术，而我的位置将主要在地面站工作。继上一名学生埃利奥特·哈斯廷的工作之后，地面站需要能够以极高的精度对准移动的卫星，并测量非常有损耗的量子信号。目前地面站的状态是，我们有一个望远镜和一个测量系统，这些需要与卫星源一起工作。对于这个博士，我需要使望远镜成为QKD协议中的一个完整的“Bob”，能够指向移动中的卫星；将量子测量光学与至少575公里外的源对准；补偿卫星对量子信号的大气扭曲和运动，并生成共享密钥。这将从在地面数百米距离上复制卫星“爱丽丝”模块开始执行这一完整的协议。然后在发射立方体卫星后，从地球到地面做同样的事情。我在地面站上的工作也使其他几个工程挑战得以克服，包括增加地面站的便携性，使接收模块望远镜不可知晓，使地面站能够传输，并进一步使其能够将纠缠从远离地面站的实验室中的原子传输到卫星。我们还可以实现其他一些“第一”，比如在任何移动的车辆上安装爱丽丝模块，并将其传输到现在可移动的望远镜，包括无人机、船只、气球或直升机，显然其中一些比其他更容易接近。

In 2020 a proposal for a satellite constellation for a UK long distance QKD network was proposed [1] as a national security capability, spurred by the growing need to be ready for post-quantum security. To do this, a fleet of satellite sources will downlink to a series of NIR optical ground-stations. The group's goal is to develop the technologies to make this possible, and my place will be mainly working on the ground station. Following on from the previous student Elliot Hasting's work, the ground station needs to be able to align with great accuracy to a moving satellite and measure the very lossy quantum signal. The current state of the ground station is that we have a telescope and a measurement system, these need to work with a satellite source. For this PhD I need to make the telescope into a full "Bob" in the QKD protocol, able to point at a moving satellite; align the quantum measurement optics with a source a minimum of 575km away; compensate for the atmospheric distortion and motion of the satellite on the quantum signal and generate a shared key. This will start with doing this full protocol with a copy of the satellite "Alice" module on the ground over a distance of a few hundreds of meters. And then after a CubeSat is launched to do the same from Earth to Ground. My work on the ground-station also enables several other engineering challenges to be overcome, including increasing the ground station portability, making the receive module telescope agnostic, making the ground station capable of transmission and further making it capable of transmitting an entanglement from an atom in a lab far from the ground station to a satellite. We could also achieve a few other "firsts" like installing an Alice module on any moving vehicle and transmitting to the now mobile telescope, including drones, ships, balloons, or helicopters, obviously some of these are more accessible than others.