Lunar Silicon Cavity
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.06352 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 6 Feb 2026] Title:Lunar Silicon Cavity Authors:Jun Ye, Zoey Z. Hu, Ben Lewis, Wei Zhang, Fritz Riehle, Uwe Sterr, Yiqi Ni, Julian Struck View a PDF of the paper titled Lunar Silicon Cavity, by Jun Ye and Zoey Z. Hu and Ben Lewis and Wei Zhang and Fritz Riehle and Uwe Sterr and Yiqi Ni and Julian Struck View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The Moon's permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are among the coldest places in the Solar System and are expected to become key landing sites for upcoming international space agency missions. Their proximity to peaks of perpetual solar power and potential resource richness makes them prime candidates for lunar exploration and future Moon bases. Here we propose to deploy a passive, ultrastable optical resonator in these regions that will enable laser systems with unprecedented phase-coherence. The unique physical environment of lunar PSRs greatly benefits the construction of a cryogenic monolithic silicon cavity that exhibits low $10^{-18}$ thermal noise-limited stability and coherence time exceeding 1 minute, more than a decade better than the current best terrestrial system. Such a stable laser will form a basic quantum technology infrastructure in space to serve many applications, including establishing a lunar time standard, building long-baseline optical interferometry, distribution of stable optical signals across networks of satellites, testing general relativity and gravitational physics, and forming the backbone for space-based quantum networks. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2602.06352 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.06352v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.06352 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Zoey Hu [view email] [v1] Fri, 6 Feb 2026 03:27:59 UTC (747 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Lunar Silicon Cavity, by Jun Ye and Zoey Z. Hu and Ben Lewis and Wei Zhang and Fritz Riehle and Uwe Sterr and Yiqi Ni and Julian StruckView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: physics physics.optics References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)