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Chinese Optics Letters

Quick single-photon detector with many avalanche photo diodes working on the time division

彭建 彭建, Jian Peng Jian Peng, 傅艺飞 傅艺飞, Yifei Fu, 姚立 姚立, Li Yao Li Yao, 尚旭东, Xudong Shang Xudong Shang, 逯志欣 逯志欣, Zhixin Lu Zhixin Lu, 杨伯君 杨伯君, Bojun Yang, 于丽 于丽, Li Yu

Published Jan 1, 2008• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Due to the limit of response speed of the present single-photon detector, the code rate is still too low to come into practical use for the present quantum key distribution (QKD) system. A new idea is put up to design a quick single-photon detector. This quick single-photon detector is composed of a multi-port optic-fiber splitter and many avalanche photo diodes (APDs). All of the ports with APDs work on the time division and cooperate with a logic discriminating and deciding unit driven by the clock signal. The operation frequency lies on the number N of ports, and can reach N times of the conventional single-photon detector. The single-photon prompt detection can come true for high repetition-rate pulses. The applying of this detector will largely raise the code rate of the QKD, and boost the commercial use.

DOI
10.3788/col20080605.0320

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Oct 6, 2011•1 citation
Due to the limit of response speed of the present single-photon detector, the
code rate is still too low to come into practical use for the present quantum key
distribution (QKD) system. A new idea is put up to design a quick single-photon
detector. This quick single-photon detector is composed of a multi-port optic-fiber
splitter and many avalanche photo diodes (APDs). All of the ports with APDs work on
the time division and cooperate with a logic discriminating and deciding unit driven
by the clock signal. The operation frequency lies on the number N of ports, and can
reach N times of the conventional single-photon detector. The single-photon prompt
detection can come true for high repetition-rate pulses. The applying of this
detector will largely raise the code rate of the QKD, and boost the commercial use.
It is the closest technology to practice in the quantum communication at present to apply single-photon scheme to implement the quantum key distribution (QKD), and may achieve the absolute security in principle. Because of the limit of the response speed of the present single-photon detector, the code rate is still too low to come into practical use. The paper has put up a new idea to design a quick single-photon detector with a multi-port optic-fiber splitter or an optical switch array and many avalanche photo diodes (APD). All of the ports with APD work on time division and cooperate with the logic discrimination and deciding unit by the clock signal, thus the quick detection can come true to high repetition-rate pulses with a single photon. The multiple of the detection rate is decided by the number of the port. The optoelectronic integration can be adopted for the reliable detector. The applying of this detector will largely raise the code rate of the QKD, and stimulate the commercial use.
Modeling and design of a single photon detector and its various characteristics are presented. It is a type of avalanche photo diode (APD) designed to suit the requirements of a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) detection system. The device is modeled to operate in a gated mode at liquid nitrogen temperature for minimum noise and maximum gain. Different types of APDs are compared for best performance. The APD is part of an optical communication link, which is a private channel to transmit the key signal. The encrypted message is sent via a public channel. The optical link operates at a wavelength of 1.55μm. The design is based on InGaAs with a quantum efficiency of more than 75% and a multiplication factor of 1000. The calculated dark current is below 10-12A with an overall signal to noise ratio better than 18 dB. The device sensitivity is better than -40 dBm, which is more than an order of magnitude higher than the dark current, corresponding to a detection sensitivity of two photons in pico-second pulses.
In our experiment, two InGaAs/InP avalanche photodiodes (APD) were used in the quantum key distribution (QKD) system for single-photon detection at telecom communication wavelength (1310/1550 nm). By using properly designed passive-quenching circuit, the photo-detection efficiency of the APD could reach 10% at 1550 nm. In order to decrease the dark count rate efficiently, we designed a coincident counting circuits for single-photon detection. Before the APD signals were sent to the signal processing circuit, the avalanche signals were amplified and shaped into the TTL pulses. In order to obtain an accurate and efficient data acquisition and to transfer synchronically several signals such as the TTL signals and pulses from Random generators, we designed a signal processing circuit with the parallel port whose speed limitation is about 100Kb/s. In our experiments of single-photon interference and quantum cryptography, the electronic designs presented us satisfactory performance and results. To achieve much higher speed for the data acquisition, we also employed the Universal Serial Bus System (USB2.0) to interface our single-photon avalanche detectors and random generators used in our QKD system, which was believed to improve the performance of QKD such as the key distribution speed.
One of our major target is quantum key distribution (QKD,) which is closest to the practical use. Though QKD can be performed only with current technology, there still remain many thing to be improved. One of the most important devices that determine the system performance is photon detectors. It limits the transmission distance in optical fiber communication wavelength. A photon detector combining the two avalanche photon diodes (APD) has been demonstrated for qubit discrimination in 1550 nm. Spikes accompanied with the signals in gated-mode were canceled by balanced output from the two APDs. The balanced APD photon detector shows very low dark count rate (2x10-7) counts/pulse) with 10 % detection efficiency. We have also developed a highly stable interferometer on a planer-lightwave-circuit (PLC.) We have achieved single-photon interference over 150 km using time-division interferometers for quantum cryptography, which were composed of the two integrated-optic asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers, and the balanced gated-mode photon detectors. The observed visibility was more than 80 % after 150-km transmission, which refers to a quantum bit error rate of less than 10 %. We will also describe temperature insensible QKD system and high speed (100 bps) key transmission over 40 km fiber.
A single-photon avalanche detector (SPAD) for high-speed quantum-key generation has successfully been developed. It has the highest photon detection repetition frequency and the lowest dark count rate in the world, as a board-mountable sub-system. The SPAD consists of an ultra-small dual-avalanche photodiode (APD) module and a novel discriminator. The APD module design is consistent with cooling capability and high-frequency characteristics. The new module has a 3 GHz bandwidth enabling 1 GHz gate-pulse repetition. The bandwidth is extended 15-fold relative to the most wideband peltier cooled APD module. The discriminator has a self-training mechanism to compensate charge pulse. Dark count rare of the SPAD is reduced 1/10th relative to the lowest dark count single photon detector. The SPAD allows 3.2-fold multiplying the quantum key generation rate in theoretical estimation.
Quantum communication, in particular, quantum key distribution (QKD) is moving ever closer to real world implementation. However, for successful QKD system deployment, the QKD system components must be robustly designed and feature highly reliable operation. In this paper we focus on one important aspect of any quantum communication system: the single photon detector. In particular our interest is centered upon the InGaAs avalanche photodiode (APD) single photon detector operating in a self-differencing (SD) mode. Such a detector features high clock frequencies of up to 3GHz, high photon count rates as well as detection efficiencies approaching 20% with low afterpulsing. We show successful operation of a high bit rate QKD system using this SD-APD technology in a real world fiber network.