QUNNECT, INC — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AF20A-T004

QUNNECT, INC — STTR Phase I award from Department of Defense.

Amount
$146,317
Agency
Department of Defense · Air Force
Program / Phase
STTR · Phase I
Topic
AF20A-T004
Solicitation
20.A
NAICS
Place of performance
NY
Period
2020-06-15 → 2020-11-15

Description

Optical quantum communications encodes information in the polarization state of single photons. This presents numerous challenges for designing practical protocols which must contend with misaligned measurement reference frames, owing to physical orientations and birefringence effects. Such effects cannot simply be corrected through multiplexing strong classical reference signals with the single-photon quantum signals. Despite sophisticated filtering methods, these methods can induce overwhelming noise in quantum systems. We propose a hardware and software-supported design which will provide a dynamic solution for fast polarization-frame alignments utilizing synchronized single-photon state measurements.