Estimating the impact of light pollution on quantum communication between QEYSSat and Canadian quantum ground station sites
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Satellite to ground quantum communication typically operates at night to reduce background signals, however it remains susceptible to noise from light pollution of the night sky. In this study we compare several methodologies for determining whether a Quantum Ground Station (QGS) site is viable for exchanging quantum signals with the upcoming Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) mission. We conducted ground site characterization studies at three locations in Canada: Waterloo, Ontario, Calgary, Alberta, and Priddis, Alberta. Using different methods we estimate the background counts expected to leak into the satellite-ground quantum channel, and determined whether the noise levels could prevent a quantum key transfer. We also investigate how satellite data recorded from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) can help estimate conditions of a particular site, and find reasonable agreement with the locally recorded data. Our results indicate that the Waterloo, Calgary, and Priddis QGS sites should allow both quantum uplinks and downlinks with QEYSSat, despite their proximity to urban centres. Furthermore, our approach allows the use of satellite borne instrument data (VIIRS) to remotely and efficiently determine the potential of a ground site.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it