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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Simple quantum key distribution scheme with excellent long-term stability

Haiqiang Ma, Kejin Wei, Yang Jian-Hui

Published Aug 28, 2013• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A simple plug-and-play quantum key distribution scheme based on the Sagnac interferometer and Faraday mirrors is described. There are relatively few components, and fiber birefringence effects are automatically compensated for, allowing extremely stable operation. Visibility better than 95% over 50 km of fiber at 1.31 μm is obtained, maintainable under ordinary lab conditions for several hours without the need of any feedback control or adjustments.

DOI
10.1364/josab.30.002560

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A simple plug-and-play quantum key distribution scheme based on the Sagnac interferometer and Faraday mirrors is described. There are relatively few components, and fiber birefringence effects are automatically compensated for, allowing extremely stable operation. Visibility better than 95% over 50 km of fiber at 1.31 μm is obtained, maintainable under ordinary lab conditions for several hours without the need of any feedback control or adjustments.
A one-way quantum key distribution scheme based on intrinsically stable Faraday-mirror-type Michelson interferometers with four-port polarizing beam splitters has been demonstrated that can compensate for birefringence effects automatically. The encoding is performed with phase modulators, but decoding is accomplished through measurement of the polarization state of Bob's photons. An extinction ratio of about 30 dB was maintained for several hours over 50 km of fiber at 1310 nm without any adjustment to the setup, which shows its good potential for practical systems.
We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. Use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers. In so-called private-key cryptographic systems, secure transmission through unprotected channels rely on the exchange of secret keys, known only to the sender, Alice, and the receiver, Bob. Quantum cryptography (QC) relies on the properties of quantum mechanics to obtain a provably secure key distribution [1, 2, 3, 4]. Most exisiting implementations rely on either the polarization [2, 5, 6] or the phase [7, 8, 9, 10] of very weak pulses of light as information carrier. To date, the longest transmission spans were obtained in optical fibers, at a wavelength of 1300 nm [6, 9, 10]. The main difficulty with polarization-based systems is the need to keep stable polarizations over distances of tens of kilometers, in standard telecom cables. Indeed, due to the birefringence of the fibers and the effect of the environment, the output polarization fluctuates randomly. Recent experiments [6]
Quantum key distribution provides unconditional security for communication. Unfortunately, current experimental schemes are not suitable for long-distance fiber transmission because of phase drift or Rayleigh backscattering. In this Letter we present a unidirectional intrinsically stable scheme that is based on Michelson-Faraday interferometers, in which ordinary mirrors are replaced with 90 degree Faraday mirrors. With the scheme, a demonstration setup was built and excellent stability of interference fringe visibility was achieved over a fiber length of 175 km. Through a 125 km long commercial communication fiber cable between Beijing and Tianjin, the key exchange was performed with a quantum bit-error rate of less than 6%, which is to our knowledge the longest reported quantum key distribution experiment under field conditions.