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"Plug and play" systems for quantum cryptography

A. Muller, T. Herzog, B. Huttner, Wolfgang Tittel, H. Zbinden, N. Gisin

Published Nov 25, 1996• 292 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. Use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers. In so-called private-key cryptographic systems, secure transmission through unprotected channels rely on the exchange of secret keys, known only to the sender, Alice, and the receiver, Bob. Quantum cryptography (QC) relies on the properties of quantum mechanics to obtain a provably secure key distribution [1, 2, 3, 4]. Most exisiting implementations rely on either the polarization [2, 5, 6] or the phase [7, 8, 9, 10] of very weak pulses of light as information carrier. To date, the longest transmission spans were obtained in optical fibers, at a wavelength of 1300 nm [6, 9, 10]. The main difficulty with polarization-based systems is the need to keep stable polarizations over distances of tens of kilometers, in standard telecom cables. Indeed, due to the birefringence of the fibers and the effect of the environment, the output polarization fluctuates randomly. Recent experiments [6]

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We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. The use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23-km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers.

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We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. Use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers. In so-called private-key cryptographic systems, secure transmission through unprotected channels rely on the exchange of secret keys, known only to the sender, Alice, and the receiver, Bob. Quantum cryptography (QC) relies on the properties of quantum mechanics to obtain a provably secure key distribution [1, 2, 3, 4]. Most exisiting implementations rely on either the polarization [2, 5, 6] or the phase [7, 8, 9, 10] of very weak pulses of light as information carrier. To date, the longest transmission spans were obtained in optical fibers, at a wavelength of 1300 nm [6, 9, 10]. The main difficulty with polarization-based systems is the need to keep stable polarizations over distances of tens of kilometers, in standard telecom cables. Indeed, due to the birefringence of the fibers and the effect of the environment, the output polarization fluctuates randomly. Recent experiments [6]
In so-called private-key cryptographic systems, secure transmission of confi dential information through unprotected channels relies on the exchange of secret keys, known only to the sender, Alice, and the receiver, Bob.Quantum cryptography is based on the properties of quantum mechanics to obtain a provably secure key distribution.Most existing implement ations rely on either the polarization or the phase of very weak pulses of light sent through optical fibers.Recent results by research groups in British Telecom, Los Alamos National Laboratory and at the University of Geneva, have shown that quantum key distribution is possible over distances of tens of kilometers, using only standard telecom cables.However, due to birefringence and the effects of the environment, the polarization at the output of a fiber fluctuates randomly.Therefore, all existing systems need active polarization control.Systems based on phase also require interferometric detection, which necessitates active stabilization of the interferometers.To eliminate these problems, our team, led by Prof. N. Gisin in the Group of Applied Physics at the University of Geneva, is currently developing a new interferometric system implementing phase-encoded quantum key distribution (US patent pending).A schematic of the setup is given in Fig. 1.Its main features are:1) The system is based on time multiplexing, the interfering pulses following exactly the same spatial path, albeit with a small time delay.The interferometer is thus automatically aligned, and needs neither adjustments nor stabilization of the path lengths.2) Use of Faraday mirrors enables all birefringence effects in the fibers to be cancelled out.Therefore, the system does not require any polarization control.With this new system, Alice and Bob could exchange their cryptographic keys through standard telecom systems.They would be provided with a sending kit and
To compensate for all polarization fluctuations in the transmitting fiber by using Faraday mirror is discussed, and and- system based on Faraday mirror for quantum cryptography is introduced, phase-encoding analysis in brief for plug- and- play system is implemented. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self-compensating. The use of Faraday mirrors compensates for automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber.
We have recently constructed a fiber-optic “plug and play” quantum cryptography system as shown in Fig.1, wherein a Faraday-Mirror was used to compensate the polarization mode dispersion and phase drifts. It worked at 1550 nm and was based on the B92 protocol[1]. We have achieved stable quantum key distribution in a standard telecom fiber with different working-distances of 10, 25 and 50 km, respectively, by using some specifically developed techniques to guarantee long-term stability of our system, such as polarization-independent phase-modulation for stable phase encoding and decoding, hybrid coincidence for efficient detection of single photons with coincidence-gated quenching of the single-photon detectors followed by coincident counting of the avalanche signals, and synchronized detection of single-photon pulses by coincidence counting gated with proper delay and width. These unique techniques greatly enhanced the fringe visibility of single-photon interference. And we have also demonstrated the application of our system in cryptographic communication by sending coded pictures from Alice to Bob using the sifted quantum keys.
Quantum key distribution provides unconditional security for communication. Unfortunately, current experimental schemes are not suitable for long-distance fiber transmission because of phase drift or Rayleigh backscattering. In this Letter we present a unidirectional intrinsically stable scheme that is based on Michelson-Faraday interferometers, in which ordinary mirrors are replaced with 90 degree Faraday mirrors. With the scheme, a demonstration setup was built and excellent stability of interference fringe visibility was achieved over a fiber length of 175 km. Through a 125 km long commercial communication fiber cable between Beijing and Tianjin, the key exchange was performed with a quantum bit-error rate of less than 6%, which is to our knowledge the longest reported quantum key distribution experiment under field conditions.