User:ML Wiki Editor/sandbox

ThinkQuantum Srl, or TQ, is an Italian company headquartered in Padua that provides quantum-based solutions for cybersecurity and communication systems.

History
Founded in 2021 as a spin-off of the QuantumFuture Research Group at the University of Padua, the company operates in diverse technologies and applications:


 * fiber-based and free-space QKD (Quantum Key Distribution)
 * Space Quantum Communication
 * Quantum Random Number Generation (QRNG)

Its main industrial partner, Officina Stellare, is an Italian company specialized in the design and production of high-tech opto-mechanical system instrumentation for both Ground and Space-based applications.

Achievements
The group has been active in the fields of Quantum Communication and Quantum Random Numbers Generation for twenty years now.

In 2008, co-founder Professor Paolo Villoresi led the first pioneering experiment demonstrating single-photon exchange between a satellite and a ground station on Earth.

This demonstration was followed by a proposal for the mitigation of turbulence effects in a QKD experiment between two Canary islands separated by 143km, the first quantum communication from an orbiting transmitter on a LEO satellite using polarization and temporal degrees of freedom, fundamental experiments in wave-particle duality of photons in Space, and single photon exchange from a MEO and GNSS satellites.

In 2020 new devices for fiber and free-space QKD have been proposed: the POGNAC polarization encoder and the iPOGNAC, its improved version for free-space applications showing intrinsic long-term stability and record quantum bit error rate.

The group also developed the first proposal for a QRNG with untrusted source with discrete variables, its generalization to continuous variables and a world-record source-device-independent heterodyne-based QRNG at 17 Gbps.

Projects
The team has been involved in several national and international projects:


 * OpenQKD EU Testbed for Quantum Communications;
 * EU project QUANGO aiming at the development of the components for a CubeSat with QKD and 5G capability;
 * project QUASAR with the objectives of development of new methods for the realization of ultra-fast and secure QRNGs;
 * EU project SECRET with the objective to carry out the first generation of genuine energy-time/time-bin experiments aimed at final, practical applications.