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The Review of Laser Engineering

Fast Quantum Cryptography System Using Single Photon Communication

Akihisa Tomita, Akio Tajima

Published Jan 1, 2008• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems based on single photon transmission can generate unconditionally secure common key between remote users. Improvement of QKD performance, particularly on key generation rate, has been required to meet current network traffic. High key generation rate is realized by increasing photon detection rate and by reducing error rate. Therefore, a high-speed QKD system should be equipped with low loss receivers with high visibility, highly efficient photon detectors with small dark count probability, and a stable clock synchronization system with low stray light to the quantum signals. A solution for these issues are given by employing planar lightwave circuit interferometers, single photon detection circuits and modules, and clock synchronization based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique.

DOI
10.2184/lsj.36.487

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Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems based on single photon transmission can generate unconditionally secure common key between remote users. Improvement of QKD performance, particularly on key generation rate, has been required to meet current network traffic. High key generation rate is realized by increasing photon detection rate and by reducing error rate. Therefore, a high-speed QKD system should be equipped with low loss receivers with high visibility, highly efficient photon detectors with small dark count probability, and a stable clock synchronization system with low stray light to the quantum signals. A solution for these issues are given by employing planar lightwave circuit interferometers, single photon detection circuits and modules, and clock synchronization based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) systems can generate unconditionally secure common keys between remote users. Improvements of QKD performance, particularly in key generation rate, have been required to meet current network traffic. A high-speed QKD system should be equipped with low-loss receivers with high visibility, highly efficient photon detectors with small dark count probability. A solution to these issues is to employ planar lightwave circuit (PLC) interferometers, single photon detection circuits and modules, together with multi-wavelength channels transmission using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique.
Improvement of QKD performance, particularly on key generation rate, has been required to meet current network traffic. A high-speed QKD system should be equipped with low loss receivers with high visibility, highly efficient photon detectors with small dark count probability, and a stable clock synchronization system with low stray light to the quantum signals, because the key generation rate is determined by photon detection rate and error rate. High speed post processing is also required to improve key generation through-put. A solution for these issues will be discussed.
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 high-speed quantum key distribution (QKD) system has been developed with the goal of a 1-Mbps final secure key generation rate under 10-dB transmission loss, which corresponds to 50 km of standard single mode fiber. For the purpose of speeding-up all processes in QKD sequence, we apply a wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) technique using the colorless interferometric technique and a key distillation hardware (HW) engine. We establish a novel WDM scheme, sharing interferometers and their temperature regulators over multiple channels, which enables us to increase the number of channels with a small impact on system cost and size. To generate a secure key while satisfying both high speed and high security, we develop a key distillation HW engine which enables us to execute key distillation with 1-Mbit code length in real time. We have experimentally evaluated the performance of the developed system through installed fiber. By operating three wavelength channels, a new, world leading key generation rate of greater than 200 kbps over a 14.5-dB transmission loss has been achieved.
A high-speed quantum key distribution system was developed with the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technique and dedicated key distillation hardware engines. Two interferometers for encoding and decoding are shared over eight wavelengths to reduce the system's size, cost, and control complexity. The key distillation engines can process a huge amount of data from the WDM channels by using a 1 Mbit block in real time. We demonstrated a three-channel WDM system that simultaneously uses avalanche photodiodes and superconducting single-photon detectors. We achieved 12 h continuous key generation with a secure key rate of 208 kilobits per second through a 45 km field fiber with 14.5 dB loss.
Advances in quantum computing pose significant threats to the security of conventional encryption standards. Although quantum key distribution systems offer inherent security, they face challenges in achieving practical secret-key rates over long transmission distances. Photonic Integrated Circuit technologies provide scalability and system efficiency for high key rates using multiplexed time-bin protocols. We present the architecture of a 16-channel multiplexed QKD system at a GHz clock rate realized on integrated photonic chips, promising further scalability. The sender module revolves around an indium-phosphide chip featuring tunable lasers, modulators, and combiners. On the receiver side, low fiber-to-chip coupling loss and waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors on silicon nitride provide the necessary detection efficiency.