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How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

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Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#41
Wasn't expecting my question to hit top of HN. I guess I'll give some context for why I asked it.

I work in quantum error correction, and was trying to collect interesting and quantitative examples of repetition codes being used implicitly in classical systems. Stuff like DRAM storing a 0 or 1 via the presence or absence of 40K electrons [1], undersea cables sending X photons per bit (don't know that one yet), some kind of number for a transistor switching (haven't even decided on the number for that one yet), etc.

A key reason quantum computing is so hard is that by default repetition makes things worse instead of better, because every repetition is another chance for an unintended measurement. So protecting a qubit tends to require special physical properties, like the energy gap of a superconductor, or complex error correction strategies like surface codes. A surface code can easily use 1000 physical qubits to store 1 logical qubit [2], and I wanted to contrast that with the sizes of implicit repetition codes used in classical computing.

1: https://web.mit.edu/rec/www/dramfaq/DRAMFAQ.html

2: https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0928

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#42
post #20

I am confused. I thought photons were just visible light but I guess these little buggers are everywhere. Also very surprised voyager is using 2.3ghz, that's crazy saturated on earth due to wifi. How these engineers make this all work, is magic to me.

> Also very surprised voyager is using 2.3ghz, that's crazy saturated on earth due to wifi Wifi didn't exist when Voyager was launched...

But the band was free for use, wasn't it? (Obviously not crowded)

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#43
Actually the limit predicted by Shannon can be significantly beaten, because Shannon assumes gaussian noise, but if we use photon counting receivers we need to use a poisson distribution. This is the Gordon-Holevo limit.

To beat Shannon you need PPM formats and photon counters (single photon detectors).

One can do significantly better than the numbers from voyager in the article using optics even without photon cpunting. Our group has shown 1 photon/bit at 10 Gbit/s [1] but others have shown even higher sensitivity (albeit at much lower data rates).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-020-00389-2

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#44
What a lovely question. The estimate is 10-100 photons/bit (minimum).

If you’re curious about how many bits a single photon can carry, in controlled settings (tabletop quantum optics) a single photon can carry log(n) bits where n is the size of the state space of the photon, which theoretically is infinite and in practice it can reach into the hundreds/thousands.

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#45
The fact that we can communicate with Voyager, and in both directions, blows my mind. It's completely counter-intuitive.

At least for Voyager->earth we can use giant radio telescopes to detect the faint signal, but how do we manage to focus on those few hundreds of photons per bit coming from a pinpoint source a light day away?!

In the earth->Voyager direction it seems even less intuitive - sure we can broadcast a powerful signal, but it's being received by a 12' wide antenna 15 billion miles away. WTF?

I guess radio communications in general is magic, a bit like (in nature of counter-intuition) quantum entanglement of particles arbitrarily far apart. It seems there is something deeply wrong about our mental models of space and time.

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#46

Wasn't expecting my question to hit top of HN. I guess I'll give some context for why I asked it. I work in quantum error correction, and was trying to collect interesting and quantitative examples of repetition codes being used implicitly in classical systems. Stuff like DRAM storing a 0 or 1 via the presence or absence of 40K electrons [1], undersea cables sending X photons per bit (don't know that one yet), some k…

Very cool. It’s interesting to realize that at some level, every system is a quantum system if you “zoom in” enough

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#47
post #37

It's crazy to me how many theoretical limits Shannon predicted way before the hardware was there.

That’s because his results are about pure information (and in the limit for infinite string lengths), so sooner or later some hardware will hit onto those limits or tend to them.

Agreed, but: he's still understudied. I think in retrospect any 21st-century math course has to include Shannon, and they don't all, yet.

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#48

Actually the limit predicted by Shannon can be significantly beaten, because Shannon assumes gaussian noise, but if we use photon counting receivers we need to use a poisson distribution. This is the Gordon-Holevo limit. To beat Shannon you need PPM formats and photon counters (single photon detectors). One can do significantly better than the numbers from voyager in the article using optics even without photon cpunt…

Interesting. Is that related to compressed sensing? I wonder if compress sensing could be used for something like the Voyager signals

It seems there might be multiple ways to go beyond Shannon’s limit, depending on what you are trying to do

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#49
post #42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also very surprised voyager is using 2.3ghz, that's crazy saturated on earth due to wifi Wifi didn't exist when Voyager was launched...

But the band was free for use, wasn't it? (Obviously not crowded)

Available for microwaves since 1947, intentional emission came later in the 80s.

Re: How many photons are received per bit transmitted from Voyager 1?

#50

Wasn't expecting my question to hit top of HN. I guess I'll give some context for why I asked it. I work in quantum error correction, and was trying to collect interesting and quantitative examples of repetition codes being used implicitly in classical systems. Stuff like DRAM storing a 0 or 1 via the presence or absence of 40K electrons [1], undersea cables sending X photons per bit (don't know that one yet), some k…

> by default repetition makes things worse instead of better

Can you elaborate on this a bit? My intuition is that, by default, statistical models benefit from larger N. But I have no experience in quantum physics.

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