Correlations existing between spectral components in multi-wavelength lasers have been the key challenge that hinders these laser sources from being developed to chaotic comb entropy sources for parallel random bit generation. Herein, spectrotemporally uncorrelated multi-order Stokes/anti-Stokes emissions are achieved by cooperatively exploiting nonlinear optical processes including cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering and quasi-phase-matched four-wave mixing in a Brillouin random fiber laser. Chaotic instabilities induced by random mode resonance are enhanced and disorderly redistributed among different lasing lines through complex nonlinear optical interactions, which comprehensively releases the inherent correlation among multiple Stokes/anti-Stokes emission lines, realizing a chaotic frequency comb with multiple spectrotemporally uncorrelated channels. Parallel fast random bit generation is fulfilled with 31 channels, single-channel bit rate of 35-Gbps and total bit rate of 1.085-Tbps. National Institute of Standards and Technology statistic tests verify the randomness of generated bit streams. This work, in a simple and efficient way, breaks the correlation barrier for utilizing multi-wavelength laser to achieve high-quality spectrotemporally uncorrelated chaotic laser source, opening new avenues for achieving greatly accelerated random bit generation through parallelization and potentially revolutionizing the current architecture of secure communication and high-performance computation.
Correlations existing between spectral components in multi-wavelength lasers have been the key challenge that hinders these laser sources from being developed to chaotic comb entropy sources for parallel random bit generation. Herein, spectrotemporally uncorrelated multi-order Stokes/anti-Stokes emissions are achieved by cooperatively exploiting nonlinear optical processes including cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering and quasi-phase-matched four-wave mixing in a Brillouin random fiber laser. Chaotic instabilities induced by random mode resonance are enhanced and disorderly redistributed among different lasing lines through complex nonlinear optical interactions, which comprehensively releases the inherent correlation among multiple Stokes/anti-Stokes emission lines, realizing a chaotic frequency comb with multiple spectrotemporally uncorrelated channels. Parallel fast random bit generation is fulfilled with 31 channels, single-channel bit rate of 35-Gbps and total bit rate of 1.085-Tbps. National Institute of Standards and Technology statistic tests verify the randomness of generated bit streams. This work, in a simple and efficient way, breaks the correlation barrier for utilizing multi-wavelength laser to achieve high-quality spectrotemporally uncorrelated chaotic laser source, opening new avenues for achieving greatly accelerated random bit generation through parallelization and potentially revolutionizing the current architecture of secure communication and high-performance computation.
Abstract Correlations existing among spectral components in multi‐wavelength lasers have remained a fundamental constraint impeding their development as chaotic comb entropy sources for parallel random bit generation. Herein, spectrotemporally uncorrelated multi‐order Stokes/anti‐Stokes emissions are achieved by exploiting cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering and quasi‐phase‐matched four‐wave mixing in a random fiber laser. The proposed configuration introduces random instabilities arising from random mode resonance while enabling disordered energy redistribution across different lasing lines, which thereby effectively eliminates the inherent correlation between multiple Stokes/anti‐Stokes emission lines, realizing a spectrotemporally uncorrelated chaotic frequency comb. Parallel fast random bit generation is fulfilled using 31 channels, with a single‐channel bit rate of 35‐Gbps and a total bit rate of 1.085‐Tbps. This work, in a simple and efficient way, breaks the spectrotemporally correlation barrier for utilizing a multi‐wavelength laser to achieve a high‐quality chaotic laser source, opening new avenues for achieving greatly accelerated random bit generation through parallelization and offering potential benefits for future developments in secure communication and high‐performance computing systems.
Correlated random bit generation (CRBG) plays an important role in secure communication, particularly for secure key distribution. In this work, we propose and numerically demonstrate a scheme of CRBG based on multi-channel broadband entropy sources and parallel filtering. In this scheme, a chaotic optical frequency comb generator is employed to produce a chaotic frequency comb with multi-channel low-correlated wideband chaos. Based on the commonly driven induced synchronization between two closed-loop distributed feedback lasers and chaotic frequency comb generation, synchronized multi-channel wideband chaos is achieved. Then, parallel filtering is implemented by utilizing an arrayed-waveguide grating to divide the chaotic frequency comb into multi-channel sub-carrier chaos with different wavelengths. To reduce the correlation among adjacent channels and improve the chaos complexity, beating frequency processing with different delay times among adjacent chaotic sub-carriers is performed to get several different sets of chaotic output, among which an enhanced bandwidth over 20 GHz and low correlations are obtained. Moreover, the correlation between the chaotic output and the driving signal can be further suppressed, indicating that the security of the scheme is guaranteed. Multi-channel high-speed CRBG with a total generation rate of 16 Gb/s is successfully achieved at two legitimate users after transmission, with the randomness of multi-channel correlated bit generation verified using a test suite from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The proposed scheme may provide a way for high-speed multi-channel parallel correlated random bits based on commercial components, which could potentially find applications in future secure optical communication systems.
The exponential growth of data transmission and processing speeds in modern digital infrastructure requires entropy sources capable of producing large volumes of true randomness for information security. Chaotic emissions from semiconductor lasers are attractive in this context because of their fast dynamics and nonrepetitive behavior. Their spectral bandwidth, however, is typically limited to several tens of gigahertz, which constrains the achievable entropy rate and makes ultrafast random bit generation difficult without substantial post-processing. Here, we demonstrate a chaos-based entropy source that employs optical heterodyning between the chaotic emission from a semiconductor laser and an optical frequency comb, yielding a bandwidth exceeding 100 GHz and an experimentally verified single-channel entropy rate of 1.86 Tb/s. By directly extracting multiple bits from the digitized output of the entropy source, we achieve a single-channel random bit generation rate of 1.536 Tb/s, while four-channel parallelization reaches 6.144 Tb/s with no observable interchannel correlation. This linear scalability suggests that aggregate throughput could reach hundreds of terabits per second with additional parallel channels. The broadband, low-overhead photonic architecture presented here provides a viable route to real-time, ultrafast random bit generation with broad implications for secure communications, high-performance AI computing, and large-scale data analytics.
Photon superbunching, distinguished by second-order coherence values far exceeding the Gaussian thermal limit, represents a highly desirable resource for quantum optics and correlation-based imaging technologies. However, existing approaches typically rely on fragile experimental platforms, inefficient nonlinear conversion processes, or mechanically complex optical architectures. Here, we demonstrate a fully fiber-integrated superbunched random fiber laser (SRFL) in which intrinsic Rayleigh scattering cooperatively interacts with cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering and quasi-phase-matched four-wave mixing to tailor extreme photon statistics. The SRFL generates a multi-wavelength comb, in which individual spectral components exhibit widely tunable photon bunching, with the second-order coherence g(2)(0) continuously controlled from ~1 to ~26 by tuning the pump power, spectral order and diffusion length. Moreover, we establish a direct correlation between photonic phase transitions (quantified by the Parisi overlap order parameter) and the emergence of superbunching, thereby bridging macroscopic disorder physics and microscopic photon statistics. Finally, we employ the superbunched emission for temporal ghost imaging, realizing high-fidelity temporal object reconstruction with a substantial reduction in required ensemble averaging. These findings validate random fiber lasers as a robust, scalable, and integrated platform for generating extreme photon statistics and unlock new avenues for correlation-enhanced photonic sensing and quantum optics investigations in complex photonic systems.
We propose a novel dual-emission random Brillouin fiber laser (RBFL) with bidirectional pumping operation. Numerical simulations and experimental verification of the chaotic temporal and statistical properties of the RBFL are conducted, revealing intrinsic unpredictable intensity fluctuations and two completely uncorrelated laser outputs. A random bit generator based on quantum noise sources in the random Fabry-Perot resonator of the RBFL is realized at a bit rate of 5 Mbps with verified randomness.
Random numbers are widely used for information security, cryptography, stochastic modeling, and quantum simulations. Key technical challenges for physical random number generation are speed and scalability. We demonstrate a method for ultrafast generation of hundreds of random bit streams in parallel with a single laser diode. Spatiotemporal interference of many lasing modes in a specially designed cavity is introduced as a scheme for greatly accelerated random bit generation. Spontaneous emission, caused by quantum fluctuations, produces stochastic noise that makes the bit streams unpredictable. We achieve a total bit rate of 250 terabits per second with off-line postprocessing, which is more than two orders of magnitude higher than the current postprocessing record. Our approach is robust, compact, and energy-efficient, with potential applications in secure communication and high-performance computation.