Using quantum entanglement to secure ground-to-satellite timing
From mobile phones and banking systems to aircraft, ships and emergency services, much of modern life relies on precise timing signals from satellites. Known as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), satellites carrying ...
When working seamlessly, these signals underpin navigation and keep critical networks running. Unfortunately, they're increasingly becoming targets for those with malicious intent.
GNSS interference is no longer a remote or theoretical risk—it is occurring globally. In contested environments, GNSS signals are being disrupted as an act of war, causing vital systems to fail. The result can be catastrophic when operations taking place across air, land, sea, cyber and space lose communication.
CSIRO researchers are helping tackle this challenge through a Defense Science and Technology Group-led quantum project designed to enhance secure timing technologies for the Australian Defense Force.
Our task? Design, build and deliver two high-flux entangled photon sources.
But while Doc and Marty travel through time, we are measuring the passage of time.
Instead of a "flux capacitor," we built a high-flux, portable and easily deployable quantum light source, which we've called the CSIRO Quantum Light Source. It generates tiny particles of light that are linked through the laws of quantum physics. Initially collaborating with Heriot Watt University, the CSIRO team set out to bring its Scottish counterparts' source design thinking out of the lab and into the field.
CSIRO researchers have developed and recently delivered two Quantum Light Sources to DSTG in Adelaide. Credit: CSIRO
Inside the box is another box, which is the brains of the Quantum Light Source and where the photons are produced (L) and the heart of the device: a simple glass cube that takes pairs of photons travelling in opposite directions and puts them into a quantum entangled state(R). Credit: CSIRO
Inside the box is another box, which is the brains of the Quantum Light Source and where the photons are produced (L) and the heart of the device: a simple glass cube that takes pairs of photons travelling in opposite directions and puts them into a quantum entangled state(R). Credit: CSIRO