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Physical Review Applied

Enhanced sensitivity via polarization switching in fiber-based quantum sensing

Xiaorui Tan, Hongjing Li, Qi Song, Binke Xia, Tailong Xiao, Shurong Wei, Jingzheng Huang, Guihua Zeng

Published Oct 6, 2023• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum sensing has performance advantages that far exceed classical sensing, where sensing with photons is one of the most useful branches, and fiberization is a significant development approach to achieve a broader range of applications. However, the birefringence effect in optical fibers can cause polarization drift, which severely reduces the sensitivity of measurement on weak signals and influences the development of quantum sensing. In order to solve this problem, we propose a scheme that builds four time-division-multiplexing channels in the system by switching the polarization states of different optical pulses, and achieves the effect of suppressing polarization drift by analyzing and integrating the effective information of the four polarization channels. Moreover, the sensitivity and linear dynamic range of the system can be adjusted by inserting a reference phase. We demonstrate the feasibility of the system via theoretical analysis, and the numerical simulation results show that the scheme can demodulate the signal well and improve the signal-to-noise ratio by 30 dB, even in the case of the signal of the direct demodulation method is drowned out by noise and completely distorted.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.20.044020

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Quantum sensing has performance advantages that far exceed classical sensing, where sensing with photons is one of the most useful branches, and fiberization is a significant development approach to achieve a broader range of applications. However, the birefringence effect in optical fibers can cause polarization drift, which severely reduces the sensitivity of measurement on weak signals and influences the development of quantum sensing. In order to solve this problem, we propose a scheme that builds four time-division-multiplexing channels in the system by switching the polarization states of different optical pulses, and achieves the effect of suppressing polarization drift by analyzing and integrating the effective information of the four polarization channels. Moreover, the sensitivity and linear dynamic range of the system can be adjusted by inserting a reference phase. We demonstrate the feasibility of the system via theoretical analysis, and the numerical simulation results show that the scheme can demodulate the signal well and improve the signal-to-noise ratio by 30 dB, even in the case of the signal of the direct demodulation method is drowned out by noise and completely distorted.
We perform a transmission of polarization encoded quantum bits through 16 km of single mode optical fiber in the 1550 nm window.The polarization drift caused by the changing birefringence of the fiber is kept stable through the use of a polarization control system we developed.This system employs 2 classical reference signals with 0.8 nm spacing from the quantum channel.We also send through the same fiber an extra reference classical signal used to trigger the single-photon detector.To the best of our knowledge this is the first time a quantum channel is multiplexed with 3 classical signals in the same optical fiber.
The physical effects such as random birefringence of fiber optic channels due to environmental influences make the optical signals transmitted in them have sensitive polarization variations, which seriously affects the performance of polarization biased code quantum key distribution systems. In this paper, a low-noise fiber channel wavelength division multiplexing real-time polarization compensation system is presented, where single photon counting is used as a feedback signal. The system can acquire the fiber channel polarization change information by detecting the photon counting of the conjugate reference light. In the system, the compensation algorithm is designed to control the electric polarization controller to calibrate the polarization state of the quantum signal light under the corresponding polarization base in real time, and the stable fiber channel polarization compensation is successfully achieved. In order to verify the effectiveness of the compensation system, a quantum key distribution test based on BB84 protocol with a transmission distance of 25.2 km is conducted, and stable test results of up to 8 hours are obtained in the laboratory environment and the simulated metropolitan area network buried fiber environment, with the average quantum bit error rate being 0.52% and 1.25%, respectively. The experimental results show that this system can guarantee the stable operation of polarization-encoded quantum key distribution in the buried fiber environment in urban areas.
Polarization drift due to propagation medium birefringence is a primary cause of increased quantum bit error ratio (QBER) in polarization-encoded quantum key distribution (QKD). The random nature of polarization drift and environmental instabilities cause it to vary over time, necessitating algorithms for effective polarization drift compensation in polarization-encoded optical fiber QKD links. I propose an algorithm based on processing time-multiplexed control pulses by unscented Kalman filter that minimizes the number of additional measurements that interrupt key exchange. I evaluated the robustness of the algorithm under various conditions, including random polarization drift velocities, and additional noise due to depolarization for weak-coherent BB84-like protocols, to determine the applicability limits of the proposed algorithm and its overhead.
In a commercial fiber-based quantum key distribution system, the local and signal optical fields are transmitted through long distance fibers by using time division multiplexing and polarization multiplexing. The state of polarization of the optical field is inevitably disturbed by random birefringence of the standard single-mode fiber caused by external complex environments. This drift of the state of polarization significantly affects the balanced homodyne detection results and the secret key rate. Therefore, the key technology of the dynamic polarization control unit is crucial for the system in a large-scale commercial application. We theoretically analyze and prove that the polarization control unit only needs the combination of two degrees of freedom when considering the result of an arbitrary polarization extinction ratio at the receiver of the system. To overcome the influence of polarization variations, we propose a chaotic monkey algorithm based on Bayesian parameter estimation method and implement intelligence algorithm on field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware under pulsed light with an integral-type detector for the dynamic polarization control unit. The simulation results show that the optimal combination is four degrees of freedom and the optimal prior distribution is an exponential distribution among various distributions in the dynamic polarization control unit. According to the simulation results, the experimental results show that the achieved polarization extinction ratio is over 30 dB and the average time of polarization control is 400 μs for a single random polarization scrambling. By combining the dynamic polarization control unit with the system, we demonstrate the continuous variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) under a continuous polarization scrambling scope of 0－2 krad/s and verify its effectiveness. In addition, the methods presented will improve the performance of the system and expand the range of applications even under strong external disturbance.
Transferring of a real quantum state in a long-distance channel is an important task in the development of quantum information networks. For greatly suppressing the relative phase fluctuations between the signal beam and the corresponding local oscillator beam, the usual method is to transfer them with time-division and polarization-division multiplexing through the same fiber. But the nonclassical states of light are very sensitive to the channel loss and extra noise, this multiplexing method must bring the extra loss to the quantum state, which may result in the vanishing of its quantum property. Here, we propose and realize a suitable time multiplexing method for the transferring and measurement of nonclassical states. Only the local oscillator beam is chopped into a sequence of light pulses and transmitted through fiber with continuous orthogonal-polarized signal beam. Finally, when the local oscillator pulses are properly time delayed compared to the signal beam, the quantum state can be measured in the time sequences without the influence of extra noise in the fiber. Our work provides a feasible scheme to transfer a quantum state in relative long distance and construct a practical quantum information network in metropolitan region.
Phase-sensitive quantum communication has received considerable attention to overcome the distance limitation of quantum communication. A fundamental problem in phase-sensitive quantum communication is to compensate phase drift in an optical fiber channel. A combination of time-, wavelength-, and space-division phase compensation can improve the phase stability of the optical fiber. However, the existing phase compensations have used only time- and wavelength-division compensation. Here, we demonstrate space-division multiplexed phase compensation in the Osaka metropolitan networks. Our compensation scheme uses two neighboring fibers, one for quantum communication and the other for sensing and compensating the phase drift. Our field investigations confirm the correlation of the phase drift patterns between the two neighboring fibers. Thanks to the correlation, our space-division multiplexed phase compensation significantly reduces the phase drift and improves the quantum bit error rate. Hence, our experimental study has established the space-division multiplexed phase compensation scheme. We also propose a hybrid scheme of space-wavelength-time-division multiplexed phase compensation for twin-field quantum key distribution and a quantum repeater system.