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Certified Quantum Random Numbers from Untrusted Light

David Drahi, Nathan Walk, Matty J. Hoban, Aleksey K. Fedorov, Roman Shakhovoy, Akky Feimov, Yury Kurochkin, W. S. Kolthammer, Joshua Nunn, Jonathan Barrett

Published Jan 1, 2020• 45 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A remarkable aspect of quantum theory is that certain measurement outcomes arc entirely unpredictable to all possible observers. Such quantum events can be harnessed to generate numbers whose randomness is asserted based upon the underlying physical processes. We formally introduce, design, and experimentally demonstrate an ultrafast optical quantum random number generator that uses a totally untrusted photonic source. While considering completely general quantum attacks, we certify and generate in real time random numbers at a rate of 8.05 Gb/s with a composable security parameter of 10(-10). Composable security is the most stringent and useful security paradigm because any given protocol remains secure even if arbitrarily combined with other instances of the same, or other, protocols, thereby allowing the generated randomness to be utilized for arbitrary applications in cryptography and beyond. This work achieves the fastest generation of composably secure quantum random numbers ever reported.

DOI
10.17169/refubium-29280

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A remarkable aspect of quantum theory is that certain measurement outcomes arc entirely unpredictable to all possible observers. Such quantum events can be harnessed to generate numbers whose randomness is asserted based upon the underlying physical processes. We formally introduce, design, and experimentally demonstrate an ultrafast optical quantum random number generator that uses a totally untrusted photonic source. While considering completely general quantum attacks, we certify and generate in real time random numbers at a rate of 8.05 Gb/s with a composable security parameter of 10(-10). Composable security is the most stringent and useful security paradigm because any given protocol remains secure even if arbitrarily combined with other instances of the same, or other, protocols, thereby allowing the generated randomness to be utilized for arbitrary applications in cryptography and beyond. This work achieves the fastest generation of composably secure quantum random numbers ever reported.
Generating random numbers plays an important role in many scientific applications. Compared to pseudorandom number generators, a quantum device is capable of generating true random numbers by the laws of quantum mechanics. However, information-theoretical secure random numbers are regularly based on a perfect device model, which may deviate from a real-world device. To close this gap, we propose a quantum random number generation protocol and experimentally demonstrate it. In our protocol, we make no assumptions about the source. Some reasonable assumptions on the trusted two-dimensional measurement are needed, but we do not require a detailed characterization. Even if considering the most general quantum attack and using the general sources, we achieve a randomness generation rate of over 1 Mbps with a universal composable security parameter of 10^{-10}.
Quantum random number generators can provide genuine randomness by appealing to the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics.In general, a physical generator contains two parts-a randomness source and its readout.The source is essential to the quality of the resulting random numbers; hence, it needs to be carefully calibrated and modeled to achieve information-theoretical provable randomness.However, in practice, the source is a complicated physical system, such as a light source or an atomic ensemble, and any deviations in the real-life implementation from the theoretical model may affect the randomness of the output.To close this gap, we propose a source-independent scheme for quantum random number generation in which output randomness can be certified, even when the source is uncharacterized and untrusted.In our randomness analysis, we make no assumptions about the dimension of the source.For instance, multiphoton emissions are allowed in optical implementations.Our analysis takes into account the finite-key effect with the composable security definition.In the limit of large data size, the length of the input random seed is exponentially small compared to that of the output random bit.In addition, by modifying a quantum key distribution system, we experimentally demonstrate our scheme and achieve a randomness generation rate of over 5 × 10 3 bit=s.
Quantum random number generators (QRNGs) harness the inherent unpredictability of quantum mechanics to produce true randomness. Yet, in many optical implementations, the light source remains a potential vulnerability—susceptible to deviations from ideal behavior and even adversarial eavesdropping. Source-device-independent (SDI) protocols address this with a pragmatic strategy, by removing trust assumptions on the source, and instead rely on realistic modeling and characterization of the measurement device. In this work, we enhance an existing SDI-QRNG protocol by eliminating the need for a perfectly balanced beam splitter within the trusted measurement device, which is an idealized assumption made for the simplification of security analysis. We demonstrate that certified randomness can still be reliably extracted across a wide range of beam-splitting ratios, significantly improving the protocol’s practicality and robustness. Using only off-the-shelf components, our implementation achieves real-time randomness generation rates of 0.347 Gbps. We also experimentally validate the protocol’s resilience against adversarial attacks and highlight its self-testing capabilities. These advances mark a significant step toward practical, lightweight, high-performance, fully passive, and composably secure QRNGs suitable for real-world deployment.
Random numbers are essential resources in science and engineering, with indispensable applications in simulation, cybersecurity, and finance. Quantum random number generators (QRNGs), based on the principles of quantum mechanics, ensure genuine randomness and unpredictability. Silicon photonics enables the large-scale deployment of integrated QRNGs due to its low cost, miniaturization, and compatibility with CMOS technology. However, current integrated QRNGs are typically based on perfect or partially perfect device models, deviating from real-world devices, which compromises the unpredictability of quantum random numbers. In this study, we implemented a silicon-based QRNG that makes no assumptions about the source and only uses trusted but uncharacterized measurement devices. In experimental demonstration, we show that our setup can generate secure random numbers with different choices of intensities of laser light, and achieve an optimized random number generation rate of up to 4.04 Mbps. Our work significantly advances the security, practicality, and commercial development of QRNGs by employing imperfect devices.
Secure random numbers are a fundamental element of many applications in science, statistics, cryptography and more in general in security protocols. We present a method that enables the generation of high-speed unpredictable random numbers from the quadratures of an electromagnetic field without any assumption on the input state. The method allows us to eliminate the numbers that can be predicted due to the presence of classical and quantum side information. In particular, we introduce a procedure to estimate a bound on the conditional min-entropy based on the entropic uncertainty principle for position and momentum observables of infinite dimensional quantum systems. By the above method, we experimentally demonstrated the generation of secure true random bits at a rate greater than 1.7 Gbit/s.