| CPC H04B 10/70 (2013.01) [H04B 10/079 (2013.01)] | 15 Claims |

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1. A method of characterizing an optical channel, comprising:
generating, using an entangled photon source (EPS), pairs of entangled photons, wherein first entangled photons A of the generated pairs of entangled photons are coupled to a first optical channel and second entangled photons B of the generated pairs of entangled photons are coupled to a second optical channel, wherein the first channel comprises an optical channel to be characterized and the second channel comprises a local storage optical channel;
detecting, at each of the first and second channels, respective entangled photons, wherein each entangled photon A is expressed in the basis (hA, hA′) and each corresponding entangled photon B is expressed in the basis (hB, hB′);
determining quantum coincidence data (QCD) of detected entangled photons A and B;
measuring quantum-correlation along (hA, hB′) and (hA′, hB) of the detected entangled photons using the determined QCD; and
responsive to (hA, hB′) being greater than (hA′, hB), characterizing the first channel as a modal loss first channel;
responsive to (hA, hB′) being less than (hA′, hB), characterizing the first channel as a decoherence first channel.
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