Exploiting Quantum Mechanics to Detect Stealth Aircraft and Submarines; Portable Atomic Clock if GPS is Knocked Out
Quantum Warriors: New Weapons from Spooky Physics
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ Quantum radar could overcome these barriers by using a beam of single entangled photons, sent one at a time. When the reflected photon is received back, it is compared with its entangled twin at the detector’s ‘idler beam’. The detector can then isolate just those photons that were originally sent by the radar, completely filtering out any other sources — making them hard to evade or confuse with jamming or electronic countermeasures.
Submarines running silent can’t avoid being made of metal. And a slow-moving metal object underwater is just what a quantum magnetometer would sniff out.
+ Without GPS, targeting an enemy would be monstrously difficult in today’s fast-moving battlefront. But it’s not just essential in warfare: civilian financial networks, telecommunication networks and electrical power grids also rely on GPS for precision timing.
+ To compensate — for the military, at least — IPAS is developing smaller, lighter and highly accurate yet portable atomic clocks that could be used in the field for navigation, communications and targeting; one is quantum optical clock; the other, a cryogenic sapphire oscillator, or ‘sapphire clock’.
+ When approaching for attack, submarines can turn off just about everything — making them very hard to detect by acoustic sensors like hydrophones, especially in the noisier undersea environments near the coast.
+ But they can’t avoid being made of metal. And a slow-moving metal object underwater is just what a quantum magnetometer would excel at sniffing out.
+ These are envisioned as an array of tiny atomic detectors on the sea floor, connected by optical fibre to monitoring stations on land. Lasers are repeatedly fired down the line, triggering atoms in the sensor to light up and — using a quantum technique known as non-linear magneto-optical rotation — measure surrounding magnetic fields. As a large, slow-moving metal object passes near one of the detectors, its magnetic ‘shadow’ can then be seen and tracked.
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