Within the last two decades, quantum physicists have been busy proposing experiments that could be done in space. At long last, their efforts seem to produce results. Lately, two more results have been published, both groups are rather well-known to qutools:

• Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment has been performed by Paolo Villoresi’s group from Padua. They have made photons reflect back from low-earth-orbiting satellites to show that the strange wave-particle nature of photons still exists after travelling a long way. This is not unrelated to our quantum eraser experiment (but on much larger scales). They have used our time-tagger quTAU in order to filter out the relevant photon detections.
  • Here is their website including a little video explaining the experiment:

    (Source: DEI, University of Padova)

  • You can find the (open source) publication here.
• Quantum Key Distribution (=Quantum Cryptography) between Austria and China. Researchers from the Austrian Acadamy of Sciences (OEAW) and their Chinese counterpart have succeeded in generating cryptographic keys between the Chinese quantum satellite “Micius” and an observatory in Graz and Bejing, respectively. These keys were combined to one, so that finally, it could be used to communicate via a cryptographically secured video chat.
  • German press release by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. They also feature a video:

    (Source: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)

Tagged as: delayed choice experiments quantum cryptography quantum key distribution quantum physics space wheeler