When constructing an optical system for communicating using polarized photons, it's critical that components and subsystems be accurately and comprehensively characterized. Especially so if that system is designed to be sent into space, where any corrections after the fact are, at best, extremely difficult (just ask Hubble). With this in mind, we developed a polarization characterization platform for optical devices based on an imaging polarimeter attached to a six-axis robot arm. In this paper, we describe the device and its performance for characterizing some sample test devices, including a large lens designed for a quantum optical transmitter to a receiver satellite.

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Two of my papers were published in Advanced Optical Technologies, recently, as part of a topical issue on applied quantum technologies.

The first paper deals with encoding the polarization of light signals for quantum key distribution (QKD). In principle, light is very good at maintaining its polarization, but in practice things like thermal effects in optical fibers and physical orientations causes polarizations to get rotated in sometimes unpredictable ways. There are various techniques to control and correct for these effects. This paper proposes an approach based on sampling the QKD signals themselves, and analyzes the performance in terms of how much light needs to be sampled. It turns out you can do very well to preserve the polarization with a relatively few signals.

The second paper looks at whether ‘adaptive optics’ techniques can be used to help transmit QKD signals from ground to an orbiting satellite. Adaptive optics uses fast sensors and deformable elements (e.g., mirrors, phase plates) to correct turbulence-induced variations, enhancing pointing precision and, thus, the total signal collected at the receiver. It turns out to be tricky to use this effectively when they satellite is in low-Earth orbit due its fast motion over the ground station [...]

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Light can be used to encode information in a variety of ways. Polarization, for example: a ‘0’ bit could be represented by a pulse of horizontally polarized light, and a ‘1’ bit could be vertically polarized. This generally works well for transmissions over free-space. Also, by allowing superposition states and reducing the intensity to single-photon levels, one can start to access interesting quantum protocols such as quantum key distribution (QKD). You can do this with other encodings, too—“time bin”, for example, where you encode information in the arrival time, early or late, relative to a reference. But because of the way the superposition state (that is, the early “and” late state) is measured, it doesn't generally work well over air because of turbulence.

A recently discovered enhancement of the measurement device by my colleagues intrinsically bypasses the turbulence problem, and in this paper, we couple this improved apparatus with a QKD system to demonstrate a real quantum protocol with time-bin encoded light transmitted over long-distance (1.2 km) free space. The approach we take here could in future be used as a bridge between optic fiber (where turbulence isn't an issue) and free-space for quantum protocols.

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It's well known that quantum entangled systems can exhibit correlations that go beyond those that could be seen if Nature worked in intuitive “classical” ways. However, as Richard Feynman noted, classical theory can support exhibiting such correlations if we invoke negative probabilities to describe their properties. What he did not do was specify how these negative probabilities ought to be chosen, and without any justification, an infinite number of different combinations could be chosen that will satisfy the relevant equations.

The concept of negative probabilities seems nonsensical because they cannot actually be observed—indeed, they cannot be observed even within the framework of quantum theory due to the effects of measurement back-action. Here, we show how they can instead be inferred through the use of weak measurements, where a meter is only weakly coupled to the property of interest, thereby avoiding the back-action problem. Each individual weak measurement has a high uncertainty, but by measuring many instances of a larger ensemble, an average can be found that implies a specific set of anomalous (i.e. beyond 0–1) probabilities. With an experimental demonstration, we thus give an empirically justified method for choosing the anomalous probabilities that allow the classical model [...]

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Quantum mechanics implies properties of Nature that clash with our intuitive notions of how the universe ought to work. Testing these properties (to see if quantum mechanics is, indeed, true) involves generating entangled quantum states of two or more particles and measuring them under a number of strict conditions. While work is progressing to meet all of these conditions when using only two particles, no one has yet met even one of these conditions for more than two particles, which is considerably more difficult experimentally. Here, we conduct an experiment where we meet two of the most challenging conditions—namely measurement locality and freedom of choice—while generating triplet entangled photon states. We demonstrate that quantum mechanics wins out over intuition, measuring a violation of Mermin's inequality outside the classical bound by nine standard deviations.

Also check out the News and Views article in the same issue, written [...]

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Generating entangled photon states is vital for numerous quantum communications and quantum computation primitives. Here we pioneer a new approach to in-fiber generation of entangled photon pairs. We take inspiration from a technique in bulk-optics, where two nonlinear crystals are sandwiched close together, and splice two pieces of birefringent optical fiber together at 90 degree orientation. With suitable compensation optics, all of which could be implemented in fiber, we show fidelity with a maximally-entangled Bell state of better than 92%.

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