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Optics Letters

Programmable quantum random number generator without postprocessing

Lac Nguyen, Patrick Rehain, Yong Meng Sua, Yu‐Ping Huang

Published Feb 2, 2018• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate a viable source of unbiased quantum random numbers whose statistical properties can be arbitrarily programmed without the need for any postprocessing such as randomness distillation or distribution transformation. It is based on measuring the arrival time of single photons in shaped temporal modes that are tailored with an electro-optical modulator. We show that quantum random numbers can be created directly in customized probability distributions and pass all randomness tests of the NIST and Dieharder test suites without any randomness extraction. The min-entropies of such generated random numbers are measured close to the theoretical limits, indicating their near-ideal statistics and ultrahigh purity. Easy to implement and arbitrarily programmable, this technique can find versatile uses in a multitude of data analysis areas.

DOI
10.1364/ol.43.000631

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We demonstrate a viable source of unbiased quantum random numbers whose statistical properties can be arbitrarily programmed without the need for any postprocessing such as randomness distillation or distribution transformation. It is based on measuring the arrival time of single photons in shaped temporal modes that are tailored with an electro-optical modulator. We show that quantum random numbers can be created directly in customized probability distributions and pass all randomness tests of the NIST and Dieharder test suites without any randomness extraction. The min-entropies of such generated random numbers are measured close to the theoretical limits, indicating their near-ideal statistics and ultrahigh purity. Easy to implement and arbitrarily programmable, this technique can find versatile uses in a multitude of data analysis areas.
Quantum random number generators offer various ways of generating entropy based on inherently nondeterministic physical processes, thus guaranteeing the quality and security of their output. While the expected output of random number generators is a uniformly distributed stream of bits, actual physical measurement statistics typically follow some other distribution, mandating additional post-processing steps. We present a post-processing scheme inspired by the continuous probability integral transform that can be used with the typically discrete distributions of physical measurement statistics to produce a close to uniformly distributed output bitstream. We give bounds on the maximum bias of the output and also show a way to produce output that is arbitrarily close statistically to the expected uniform distribution in an ideal scenario. While the scheme can be used with any input distribution, we utilized a photonic time-of-arrival based architecture to give a practical example of usage and acquire experimental results, which we statistically tested with the NIST Statistical Test Suite.
We demonstrate a novel high speed and multi-bit optical quantum random number generator by continuously measuring arrival time of photons with a common starting point. To obtain the unbiased and post-processing free random bits, the measured photon arrival time is converted into the sum of integral multiple of a fixed period and a phase time. Theoretical and experimental results show that the phase time is an independent and uniform random variable. A random bit extraction method by encoding the phase time is proposed. An experimental setup has been built and the unbiased random bit generation rate could reach 128 Mb/s, with random bit generation efficiency of 8 bits per detected photon. The random numbers passed all tests in the statistical test suite.
We present a practical high-speed quantum random number generator, where the timing of single-photon detection relative to an external time reference is measured as the raw data. The bias of the raw data can be substantially reduced compared with the previous realizations. The raw random bit rate of our generator can reach 109 Mbps. We develop a model for the generator and evaluate the min-entropy of the raw data. Toeplitz matrix hashing is applied for randomness extraction, after which the final random bits are able to pass the standard randomness tests.
We present a first random number generator (RNG) which simultaneously uses independent spatial and temporal quantum randomness contained in an optical system. Availability of the two independent sources of entropy makes the RNG resilient to hardware failure and signal injection attacks. We show that the deviation from randomness of the generated numbers can be estimated quickly from simple measurements thus eliminating the need for usual time-consuming statistical testing of the output data. As a confirmation it is demonstrated that generated numbers pass NIST Statistical test suite.
We present a high-quality bias-free quantum random number generator (QRNG) using photon arrival time selectively, in accordance with the number of photon detection events within a sampling time interval in attenuated light. It is well shown in both theoretical analysis and experimental verification that this random number production method eliminates both bias and correlation perfectly without more postprocessing and that the random number can clearly pass the standard randomness tests. We fulfill theoretical analysis and experimental verification of the method whose rate can reach up to 45 Mb/s.