{"id":243144,"date":"2026-08-25T01:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T06:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/new-free-space-optical-link-adds-a-wireless-component-to-the-nations-longest-quantum-network"},"modified":"2026-08-25T01:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T06:27:08","slug":"new-free-space-optical-link-adds-a-wireless-component-to-the-nations-longest-quantum-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/new-free-space-optical-link-adds-a-wireless-component-to-the-nations-longest-quantum-network","title":{"rendered":"New free-space optical link adds a wireless component to the nation\u2019s longest quantum network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-free-space-optical-link-adds-a-wireless-component-to-the-nations-longest-quantum-network.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a new lighthouse on Long Island. But instead of shining light to guide ships through waterways, this one transmits and receives particles of light that carry quantum information. Perched atop a seven-story building at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the \u201cQuantum Lighthouse\u201d is a key pillar of the free-space optical (FSO) link spanning Brookhaven Lab, the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University) and Yale University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn FSO link is analogous to the wireless technology that allowed today\u2019s classical internet to expand beyond wired connections to orbiting satellites, as well as our cellphones,\u201d said Justine Haupt, Brookhaven Lab\u2019s lead scientist on the cross-institutional FSO link project. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the key technologies needed to make a quantum internet truly useful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This FSO link\u2014the first permanent one of its kind\u2014adds a wireless component to the nation\u2019s longest quantum network, which spans 161 miles (259 kilometers) across Long Island and the New York metropolitan area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a new lighthouse on Long Island. But instead of shining light to guide ships through waterways, this one transmits and receives particles of light that carry quantum information. Perched atop a seven-story building at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the \u201cQuantum Lighthouse\u201d is a key pillar of the free-space optical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1512,48,1617,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-phones","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}