We present a simple setup to implement truly random number generator based on the measurement of the laser phase noise. From the entropy point of view, we estimate the number of truly random bits that can be extracted from the sampled Byte. With a simple method of adopting the $m$-least-significant-bit, we amplify the entropy of the original bit sequence and realize a truly random bit generation rate of $300$ Mbps.
We present a simple setup to implement truly random number generator based on the measurement of the laser phase noise. From the entropy point of view, we estimate the number of truly random bits that can be extracted from the sampled Byte. With a simple method of adopting the m-least-significant-bit, we amplify the entropy of the original bit sequence and realize a truly random bit generation rate of 300 Mbps.
We present a simple approach to realize truly random number generator based on measuring the phase noise of a single-mode vertical cavity surface emitting laser. The true randomness of the quantum phase noise originates from the spontaneous emission of photons and the random bit generation rate is ultimately limited only by the laser linewidth. With the final bit generation rate of 20 Mbit/s, the truly random bit sequence guaranteed by the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics passes the three standard randomness tests (ENT, Diehard, and NIST Statistical Test Suites). Moreover, a continuously generated random bit sequence, with length up to 14 Gbit, is verified by two additional criteria for its true randomness.
We present a random number generation scheme based on measuring the phase fluctuations of a laser with a simple experimental setup. A simple model is established to analyze the randomness and the simulation result based on this model fits well with the experiment data. After the analog to digital sampling and suitable randomness extraction integrated in the field programmable gate array, the final random bits are delivered to a PC, realizing a 5.4 Gbps real time quantum random number generation. The final random bit sequences have passed all the NIST and DIEHARD tests.
The quantum random number generation based on laser phase noise, which is featured with high random number generation rate and ease for photonic integration, has been extensively investigated and demonstrated. Despite these advancements, a theoretical model to achieve optimal performance in terms of maximizing the random number generation rate is still incomplete. In this work, a comprehensive physical model for this scheme is introduced to accurately predict the power spectrum of entropy source and probability distribution of raw data, based on which the entropy source bandwidth and extractable randomness can be accordingly estimated and thus the system performance can be quantitatively evaluated and optimized. The model is sufficiently validated through both simulation and experiment with significant agreement under various typical setups. Furthermore, our proposal enables the proactive design of experimental parameters to achieve optimal system performance, which is crucial for the design and practical implementation of photonics integrated quantum random number generations.
Quantum random number generators allow for access of a truly unpredictable random sequence. A popular scheme is based on the laser phase noise, which, however, is generally limited in speed and implementation complexity, especially for chip integration. In this work, a general physical model based on the Wiener process for such schemes is introduced, through which the limitation on generation speed is clearly explained and comprehensive optimization is achieved. We present an insight to exploit the potential frequency band of a quantum entropy source with a simple filtering method and experimentally boost the bandwidth to 20 GHz, where an ultra-fast generation rate of 156 Gbps is demonstrated. Our proposal significantly enhances the ceiling speed of such schemes without requiring extra complex hardware, thus effectively benefiting the corresponding chip integration with high performance and low implementation cost, paving the way for its large-scale applications. Quantum random number generators based on laser phase noise provide access to truly unpredictable sequences, but the speed and implementation complexity have posed significant challenges, particularly for chip-scale integration. To address these limitations, this work introduces a general physical model based on the Wiener process to clearly explain the performance bottleneck for such a scheme and presents a simple filtering method to significantly boost the bandwidth of the quantum entropy source, achieving an ultra-fast generation rate of 156 Gbps.
True randomness is critical to secure communication in both quantum and classical regimes. We propose an approach of true random number generation based on the intrinsic randomness of spontaneous emission. In this approach, a method of random bit extraction was employed to extract true random bits simultaneously as the measurement of the physical entropy source. The random bits generated by the true random number generators have been statistically verified to be bias-free and mutually independent. With the current experimental setup, 7 random bits can be generated in parallel at a rate up to 40 GHz.
Random numbers have great application value in the fields of secure communications, which are commonly used as secret keys to encrypt the information. To guarantee that the information is absolutely secure in the current high-speed communication, the applied random keys should possess a generation speed not less than the encrypted data rate, according to one-time pad theory found by Shannon (Shannon C E 1949 Bell.Syst.Tech.J. 28 656) Pseudo-random numbers generated by algorithm may easily reach a fast speed, but a certain periodicity makes them difficult to meet the aforementioned demand of information security. Utilizing physical stochastic phenomena can provide reliable random numbers, called physical random number generators (RNGs). However, limited by the bandwidth of the conventional physical sources such as electronic noise, frequency jitter of oscillator and quantum randomness, the traditional physical RNG has a generation speed at a level of Mb/s typically. Therefore, real-time and ultrafast physical random number generation is urgently required from the view of absolute security for high-speed communication today. With the advent of wideband photonic entropy sources, in recent years lots of schemes for high-speed random number generation are proposed. Among them, chaotic laser has received great attention due to its ultra-wide bandwidth and large random fluctuation of intensity. The real-time speed of physical RNG based on chaotic laser is now limited under 5 Gb/s, although the reported RNG claims that an ultrafast speed of Tb/s is possible in theory. The main issues that restrict the real-time speed of RNG based on chaotic laser are from two aspects. The first aspect is electrical jitter bottleneck confronted by the electrical analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Specifically, most of the methods of extracting random numbers are first to convert the chaotic laser into an electrical signal by a photo-detector, then use an electrical ADC driven by radio frequency (RF) clock to sample and quantify the chaotic signal in electronic domain. Unfortunately, the response rate of ADC is below Gb/s restricted by the aperture jitter (several picoseconds) of RF clock in the sample and hold circuit. The second aspect comes from the complex post-processes, which are fundamental in current RNG techniques to realize a good randomness. The strict synchronization among post-processing components (e.g., XOR gates, memory buffers, high-order difference) is controlled by an RF clock. Similarly, it is also an insurmountable obstacle to achieve an accurate synchronization due to the electronic jitter of the RF clock. In this paper, we propose a method of ultrafast multi-bit physical RNG based on chaotic laser without any post-process. In this method, a train of optical pulses generated by a GHz mode-locked laser with low temporal jitter at a level of fs is used as an optical sampling clock. The chaotic laser is sampled in the optical domain through a low switching energy and high-linearity terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (TOAD) sampler, which is a fiber loop with an asymmetrical nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier. Then, the peak amplitude of each sampled chaotic pulse is digitized by a multi-bit comparator (i.e., a multi-bit ADC without sample and hold circuit) and converted into random numbers directly. Specifically, a proof-of-principle experiment is executed to demonstrate the aforementioned proposed method. In this experiment, an optical feedback chaotic laser is used, which has a bandwidth of 6 GHz. Through setting a sampling rate to be 5 GSa/s and selecting 4 LSBs outputs of the 8-bit comparator, 20 Gb/s (=5 GSa/s4 LSBs) physical random number sequences are obtained. Considering the ultrafast response rate of TOAD sampler, the speed of random numbers generated by this method has the potential to reach several hundreds of Gb/s as long as the used chaotic laser has a sufficient bandwidth.