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arXiv:2103.05018 · Physical Review Applied

Few-Mode-Fiber Technology Fine-tunes Losses in Quantum Communication Systems

A. Alarcón, J. Argillander, G. Lima, GUILHERME BARRETO XAVIER

Published Sep 9, 2021• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A natural choice for quantum communication is to use the relative phase between two paths of a single photon for information encoding. This method was nevertheless quickly identified as impractical over long distances, and thus a modification based on single-photon time bins has become widely adopted. It, however, introduces a fundamental loss, which increases with the dimension and limits its application over long distances. Here solve this long-standing hurdle by using a few-mode-fiber space-division-multiplexing platform working with orbital-angular-momentum modes. In our scheme, we maintain the practicability provided by the time-bin scheme, while the quantum states are transmitted through a few-mode fiber in a configuration that does not introduce postselection losses. We experimentally demonstrate our proposal by successfully transmitting phase-encoded single-photon states for quantum cryptography over 500 m of few-mode fiber, showing the feasibility of our scheme.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.16.034018

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A natural choice for quantum communication is to use the relative phase between two paths of a single photon for information encoding. This method was nevertheless quickly identified as impractical over long distances, and thus a modification based on single-photon time bins has become widely adopted. It, however, introduces a fundamental loss, which increases with the dimension and limits its application over long distances. Here solve this long-standing hurdle by using a few-mode-fiber space-division-multiplexing platform working with orbital-angular-momentum modes. In our scheme, we maintain the practicability provided by the time-bin scheme, while the quantum states are transmitted through a few-mode fiber in a configuration that does not introduce postselection losses. We experimentally demonstrate our proposal by successfully transmitting phase-encoded single-photon states for quantum cryptography over 500 m of few-mode fiber, showing the feasibility of our scheme.
A natural choice for quantum communication is to use the relative phase between two paths of a single-photon for information encoding. This method was nevertheless quickly identified as impractical for fibre-based communication due to the requirement of a long stabilised interferometer to connect the communicating parties. A modification based on single-photon time-bins has then become widely adopted, with its practicability relying on trading the long interferometer for two shorter local ones. It however, introduces a fundamental loss, which increases with the dimension and that limits its application over long distances. Here, we are able to solve this long-standing hurdle by employing a few-mode fibre space-division multiplexing platform working with orbital angular momentum modes. In our scheme, we maintain the practicability provided by two short interferometers, while the quantum states are transmitted through a few-mode fibre in a configuration that does not require temporal post-selection, thus enabling a detection system without irreversible losses. Our solution can be instantly deployed opening up new paths for the already commercial phase-coding quantum communication systems.
Society as we know it today would not have been possible without the explosive and astonishing development of telecommunications systems, and optical fibers have been one of the pillars of these technologies. Despite the enormous amount of data being transmitted over optical networks today, the trend is that the demand for higher bandwidths will also increase. Given this context, a central element in the design of telecommunications networks will be data security, since information can often be confidential or private. Quantum information emerges as a solution to encrypt data by quantum key distribution (QKD) between two users. This technique uses the properties of nature as the fundamentals of operation rather than relying on mathematical constructs to provide data protection. A popular alternative to performing QKD is to use the relative phase between two individual photon paths for information encoding. However, this method was not practical over long distances. The time-bin- based scheme was a solution to the previous problem given its practical nature, however, it introduces intrinsic losses due to its design, which increases with the dimension of the encoded quantum system. In this thesis we have designed and tested a fiber-optic platform using spatial-division- multiplexing techniques. The use of few-mode fibers and photonic lanterns are the cornerstone of our proposal, which also allow us to support orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. The platform builds on the core ideas of the phase-coded quantum communication system and also takes advantage of the benefits proposed by the time-bin scheme. We have experimentally tested our proposal by successfully transmitting phase-coded single-photon states over 500 m few-mode fiber, demonstrating the feasibility of our scheme. We demonstrated the successful creation of OAM states, their propagation and their successful detection in an all in-fiber scheme. Our platform eliminates the post-selection losses of time-bin quantum communication systems and ensures compatibility with next-generation optical networks and opens up new possibilities for quantum communication.
Space-division multiplexing using multimode optical fibers has been applied to quantum-level signals with time-bin and phase encoding, achieving megaqubits per second over 8 km of few-mode fiber. Time windowing is efficiently employed to eliminate modal crosstalk between quantum channels. The dead time of the single-photon detectors in each quantum channel, typically regarded as a bottleneck in quantum transmission, is synchronized with the time-window intervals, thereby optimizing the detection rates.
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The field of quantum communication is thriving as a complement to conventional telecommunication with its distinctive feature of absolute security. As the core technology for delivering quantum information, substantial advances in quantum communication have already been demonstrated on various platforms, including photonic systems. Among all of them, the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons with its infinite Hilbert space has attracted much attention and has been widely employed in both classical and quantum regimes. In particular, many types of fiber have been designed and fabricated to allow transmitting OAM of photons. Here, we review recent progress in transmitting OAM quantum states through different types of fiber, including few-mode fibers, multi-mode fibers, ring-core fibers, and single-mode fibers. We also discuss the challenges and prospects of quantum OAM in fibers.
Quantum communication aims to provide absolutely secure transmission of secret information. State-of-the-art methods encode symbols into single photons or coherent light with much less than one photon on average. For long-distance communication, typically a single-mode fiber is used and significant effort has been devoted already to increase the data carrying capacity of a single optical line. Here we propose and demonstrate a fundamentally new concept for remote key establishment. Our method allows high-dimensional alphabets using spatial degrees of freedom by transmitting information through a light-scrambling multimode fiber and exploiting the no-cloning theorem. Eavesdropper attacks can be detected without using randomly switched mutually unbiased bases. We prove the security against a common class of intercept-resend and beam-splitting attacks with single-photon Fock states and with weak coherent light. Since it is optical fiber based, our method allows to naturally extend secure communication to larger distances. We experimentally demonstrate this new type of key exchange method by encoding information into a few-photon light pulse decomposed over guided modes of an easily available multimode fiber.