Abstract: Quantum networking has the potential to augment existing communication channels, making them more secure. However, while entanglement has been shown to be distributable to ~300 km in fiber and ~2400 km in free-space, transcontinental entanglement distribution (on the order of 5000-6000 km) has yet to be demonstrated. We leverage a well-explored quantum communication protocol, entanglement swapping, to bridge this distance. To implement entanglement swapping, two indistinguishable photons from two different entangled pairs are projected onto a bell state using a 50/50 beamsplitter. The challenge: both photons must arrive within their reciprocal spectral bandwidths, on the order of picoseconds. In this talk, I will discuss the motivation for leveraging entanglement swapping, the challenges of implementing it on a moving platform, and the current progress toward building our optical testbed to show its viability.
Bio: John C Floyd is a 6th year physics graduate student working for Paul Kwiat on entanglement distribution techniques and low-jitter single photon detection.