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Applied Optics

Characterization of the temporal phase fluctuations in a weak atmospheric turbulence regime as a random bit-stream generator

Carlos O. Font, G. C. Gilbreath, Sergio R. Restaino, David Bonanno, Blerta Bajramaj, Kristen Nock

Published Jul 29, 2015• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

This paper investigates the extent to which atmospheric turbulence can be exploited as a random bit generator. Atmospheric turbulence is considered an inherently random process due to the complex inhomogeneous system composition and its sensitivity to changes in pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind conditions. A self-calibrating Mach-Zehnder interferometer was used to collect phase fluctuations in the temporal domain introduced to an optical beam propagating through the atmosphere. The recorded phase fluctuations were converted into bit streams that were further analyzed in order to search for evidence of randomness. Empirical data and results that characterize the degree of randomness produced in the temporal phase component of an optical wave propagating through the atmosphere are presented.

DOI
10.1364/ao.54.000f42

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This paper investigates the extent to which atmospheric turbulence can be exploited as a random bit generator. Atmospheric turbulence is considered an inherently random process due to the complex inhomogeneous system composition and its sensitivity to changes in pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind conditions. A self-calibrating Mach-Zehnder interferometer was used to collect phase fluctuations in the temporal domain introduced to an optical beam propagating through the atmosphere. The recorded phase fluctuations were converted into bit streams that were further analyzed in order to search for evidence of randomness. Empirical data and results that characterize the degree of randomness produced in the temporal phase component of an optical wave propagating through the atmosphere are presented.
Characterizing atmospheric turbulence through modeling dates back to the 1960's. For decades scientists have studied how to mitigate the effects of the atmospheric turbulence on communications and imaging systems, but learning how to use those properties of the atmosphere instead of mitigate them raise new challenges. Due to the fact that atmospheric turbulence is inherently a random process, it can be an ideal "key generator" for strongly secure information transfer. The purpose of this effort is to investigate to what extent the atmospheric turbulence can be exploited as a robust random number generator. In this paper we report the progress in characterizing the atmosphere and a random bitstream generator.
We describe an experimental laboratory system that generates and distributes random binary sequence bit streams between two optical terminals (labeled Alice and Bob). The random binary sequence is generated through probing the optical channel of a turbulent atmosphere between the two terminals with coincident laser beams. The two laser beams experience differential phase delays while propagating through the atmospheric optical channel. The differential phase delays are detected and sampled at each terminal to yield raw random bit streams. The random bit streams are processed to remove bit errors and, through privacy amplification, to yield a bit stream known only to Alice and Bob. The same chaotic physical mechanism that provides randomness also provides confidentiality. The laboratory system yielded secret key bit rates of a few bits/second . For external optical channels over longer channel lengths with atmospheric turbulence levels, secret bit rates of 10 s of bits/second are predicted.
Random numbers represent a fundamental ingredient for secure communications and numerical simulation as well as to games and in general to Information Science. Physical processes with intrinsic unpredictability may be exploited to generate genuine random numbers. The optical propagation in strong atmospheric turbulence is here taken to this purpose, by observing a laser beam after a 143 km free-space path. In addition, we developed an algorithm to extract the randomness of the beam images at the receiver without post-processing. The numbers passed very selective randomness tests for qualification as genuine random numbers. The extracting algorithm can be easily generalized to random images generated by different physical processes.
We developed a laboratory-scale testbed to simulate atmospheric turbulence effects and to investigate the role of turbulence on the quantum information content of a free-space qubit transport. We report the development, characterization, and calibration of the testbed for the statistical parameters of the turbulence employing two phase screens, which produced weak to strong turbulence replicating long distances in the atmosphere for single photon propagation. By taking a long-exposure image of the point-spread function of a pinhole and analyzing the associated modulation transfer function, we measured a D / r 0 ranging from 1.04 to 23.27. Using irradiance fluctuations, we measured an on-axis scintillation index ranging from 0.25 to 2.02. The TASQ was designed to integrate a biphoton source, along with a single photon detection module to test the effect of turbulence on qubit transport. The calibrated setup will provide critical data for field experiments involving long-distance quantum networks.
We examine the impact of the atmospheric turbulence on a recently discovered type of classical entanglement of partially coherent beams endowed with a twist phase. We derive a compact analytical expression for the Schmidt number of a bi-orthogonal decomposition of the Wigner function of a twisted Gaussian Schell-model (TGSM) beam propagating through the turbulent atmosphere. We elucidate conditions for a TGSM source to generate a strongly classically entangled paraxial field over a desired propagation distance in the turbulent atmosphere. Our results will find applications to free-space optical communications and motivate further research into classical entanglement with random light.