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arXiv:1105.0597

Polarisation drift compensation in an 8 km long Mach-Zehnder fibre-optical interferometer for quantum communication

GUILHERME BARRETO XAVIER, T. R. da Silva, Guilherme P. Temporão, Jean Pierre von der Weid

Published May 3, 2011• 0 citations
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Abstract

We experimentally stabilise the polarisation drift between the arms of an 8 km-long fibre-optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, while simultaneously compensating the phase fluctuations. The single photons are wavelength-multiplexed with three classical channels, which are used as feedback for the control systems. Two of these channels are used for the active polarisation control systems, while the other is used to phase-lock the interferometer. We demonstrate long-term stabilisation of the single-photon visibility when polarisation control is used.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1105.0597

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We experimentally stabilise the polarisation drift between the arms of an 8 km-long fibre-optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, while simultaneously compensating the phase fluctuations. The single photons are wavelength-multiplexed with three classical channels, which are used as feedback for the control systems. Two of these channels are used for the active polarisation control systems, while the other is used to phase-lock the interferometer. We demonstrate long-term stabilisation of the single-photon visibility when polarisation control is used.
The polarisation drift between the arms of an 8 km-long fibre-optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer is experimentally stabilised, while simultaneously compensating the phase fluctuations. The single photons are wavelength-multiplexed with three classical channels, which are used as feedback for the control systems. Two of these channels are used for the active polarisation control systems, while the other is used to phase-lock the interferometer. Long-term stabilisation of the single-photon visibility when polarisation control is used is demonstrated.
We experimentally demonstrate stable and user-adjustable single-photon interference in a 1 km long fiber-optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer, using an active phase control system with the feedback provided by a classical laser. We are able to continuously tune the single-photon phase difference between the interferometer arms using a phase modulator, which is synchronized with the gate window of the single-photon detectors. The phase control system employs a piezoelectric fiber stretcher to stabilize the phase drift in the interferometer. A single-photon net visibility of 0.97 is obtained, yielding future possibilities for experimental realizations of quantum repeaters in optical fibers and violation of Bell's inequalities using genuine energy-time entanglement.
It is experimentally demonstrated that a long distance actively stabilised Mach-Zehnder fibre optical interferometer can be used to reliably implement the GV95 quantum cryptography protocol employing orthogonal states. A proof-of-principle experiment using an interferometer composed of 1 km of spooled optical fibres connecting Alice and Bob is performed. The active stabilisation against phase drifts is done with a classical channel wavelength-multiplexed with the quantum channel and a highly stable visibility implying a quantum bit error rate of 2.2 % is shown.
We report on single-photon interference experiments in a Michelson-type interferometer built with two 6-km-long fiber spools, as well as on the active stabilization of the interferometer. A weak coherent light signal was (de-) multiplexed with a strong reference light using wavelength-division multiplexing technique, and real-time feedback control technique was applied for the reference light to actively stabilize the phase fluctuation in the long-armed fiber interferometer. The stabilized interferometer showed phase stability of 0.06 rad, which corresponds to an optical path length fluctuation of 15 nm between the 6-km-long interfering arms. The raw visibility obtained without subtracting noise counts in the single-photon interference experiment was more than 98% for stabilized conditions.
In this paper we demonstrate an active polarization drift compensation scheme for optical fibres employed in a quantum key distribution experiment with polarization encoded qubits. The quantum signals are wavelength multiplexed in one fibre along with two classical optical side channels that provide the control information for the polarization compensation scheme. This set-up allows us to continuously track any polarization change without the need to interrupt the key exchange. The results obtained show that fast polarization rotations of the order of 40π rad s–1 are effectively compensated for. We demonstrate that our set-up allows continuous quantum key distribution even in a fibre stressed by random polarization fluctuations. Our results pave the way for Bell-state measurements using only linear optics with parties separated by long-distance optical fibres.