The time-delay signature (TDS) suppression of semiconductor lasers with external optical feedback is necessary to ensure the security of chaos-based secure communications. Here we numerically and experimentally demonstrate a technique to effectively suppress the TDS of chaotic lasers using quantum noise. The TDS and dynamical complexity are quantified using the autocorrelation function and normalized permutation entropy at the feedback delay time, respectively. Quantum noise from quadrature fluctuations of the vacuum state is prepared through balanced homodyne measurement. The effects of strength and bandwidth of quantum noise on chaotic TDS suppression and complexity enhancement are investigated numerically and experimentally. Compared to the original dynamics, the TDS of this quantum noise improved chaos is suppressed up to 94%, and the bandwidth suppression ratio of quantum noise to chaotic laser is 1:25. The experiment agrees well with the theory. The improved chaotic laser is potentially beneficial to chaos-based random number generation and secure communication.
The time-delay signature (TDS) suppression of semiconductor lasers with external optical feedback is necessary to ensure the security of chaos-based secure communications. Here we numerically and experimentally demonstrate a technique to effectively suppress the TDS of chaotic lasers using quantum noise. The TDS and dynamical complexity are quantified using the autocorrelation function and normalized permutation entropy at the feedback delay time, respectively. Quantum noise from quadrature fluctuations of the vacuum state is prepared through balanced homodyne measurement. The effects of strength and bandwidth of quantum noise on chaotic TDS suppression and complexity enhancement are investigated numerically and experimentally. Compared to the original dynamics, the TDS of this quantum noise improved chaos is suppressed up to 94%, and the bandwidth suppression ratio of quantum noise to chaotic laser is 1:25. The experiment agrees well with the theory. The improved chaotic laser is potentially beneficial to chaos-based random number generation and secure communication.
Continuous variable quantum random number generator (CV-QRNG) has become one of the most actively developing QRNG schemes due to its excellent application prospects. Whether it is device-trusted or device-independent, the improvement of the quantum entropy relative to side information is a key bottleneck to be broken through in the CV-QRNG scheme, particularly against metrological-grade entropy evaluation. In this work, initial value hypersensitivity chaotic amplification of quantum shot noise is proposed to enhance quantum noise entropy content in CV-QRNG. A noise-added Lang-Kobayashi model is established to simulate, and multiple indexes to quantitatively evaluate, the divergence, convergence, and entropy increase in the dynamic process from quantum shot noise to a chaos-steady state in a chaotic laser. Based on homodyne detection of quadrature fluctuations of four independent quantum sideband modes of a chaotic laser, an extract ratio of 89% and a real-time yield of QRN of 21.28 Gbps are attained on the strength of chaos amplification of vacuum noise. The quantum classical noise ratio (QCNR) and the flatness of the entropy source are significantly enhanced and the relief of the RF amplifier and logic resource in post-processing supports high robustness, integrability, and scalability. The amplification effect of chaos on quantum fluctuations is similar to a passive and uncontrollable Gaussian modulation, which may play a role in CV quantum communication.
Abstract The no-knowledge quantum feedback, introduced in Phys. Rev. Lett., 113, 020407 (2014), is a measurement-based feedback protocol for decoherence suppression in a quantum system coupled to noisy environment. By continuously measuring the environmental noise, without directly gathering any information about the system, the decoherence effect can be suppressed by feeding back quantum controls proportional to the measured signal. In the original work, the feedback control was assumed instantaneous, leading to perfect cancellation of noise backaction on the quantum system. However, the instantaneous feedback is difficult to achieve in practice, and close-loop feedback protocols are always associated with finite delayed time. Therefore, in this work, we consider the effects of the delay between the time at which the measurement signal is acquired and the time that such signal is fed back to the system. We investigate the problem with an example of a two-level system (qubit) coupled to a Markovian reservoir, via a Hermitian coupling operator, where a homodyne detection is used to measure the environmental noise. We numerically simulate quantum stochastic trajectories of the qubit and analyse their averaged dynamics. We find that the feedback control with time delay can either enhance or reduce the decoherence effects, depending on whether the delayed time is in-phase or out-of-phase with the unitary dynamics of the qubit system.
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.
Information-theoretically provable unique true random numbers, which cannot be correlated or controlled by an attacker, can be generated based on quantum measurement of vacuum state and universal-hashing randomness extraction. Quantum entropy in the measurements decides the quality and security of the random number generator (RNG). At the same time, it directly determines the extraction ratio of true randomness from the raw data, in other words, it obviously affects quantum random bits generating rate. In this work, we commit to enhancing quantum entropy content in the vacuum noise based quantum RNG. We have taken into account main factors in this proposal to establish the theoretical model of quantum entropy content, including the effects of classical noise, the optimum dynamical analog-digital convertor (ADC) range, the local gain and the electronic gain of the homodyne system. We demonstrate that by amplifying the vacuum quantum noise, abundant quantum entropy is extractable in the step of post-processing even classical noise excursion, which may be deliberately induced by an eavesdropper, is large. Based on the discussion and the fact that the bandwidth of quantum vacuum noise is infinite, we propose large dynamical range and moderate TIA gain to pursue higher local oscillator (LO) amplification of vacuum quadrature and broader detection bandwidth in homodyne system. High true randomness extraction ratio together with high sampling rate is attainable. Experimentally, an extraction ratio of true randomness of 85.3% is achieved by finite enhancement of the laser power of the LO when classical noise excursions of the raw data is obvious.
In this paper, a novel phase encryption scheme based on a dual-loop electro-optic self-feedback structure is proposed for time-delay signature (TDS) concealment. As for a conventional single-loop feedback structure, the TDS is extremely vulnerable to exposure in the common link, resulting in a fatal weakness in the entire security system, whereas, the introduction of an additional feedback branch, brings about the mutual dynamics between the phase feedbacks, and effectively solves the problem. The modulation depth and dispersion values, which are two crucial variables affecting TDS concealment, are investigated in detail. In principle, the scheme is verified to have better robustness, more security, and can supply large key space. Error-free transmission of high-speed signals is possible. Thanks to the aforementioned benefits, the dual-loop electro-optic structure proposed could inspire fresh ideas for secure optical communication systems in the future.