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Frontiers in Optics

Polarization Mode Dispersion Mitigation using Dual-Wavelength Headers in Quantum Wrapper Networks

James van Howe, Gamze Gül, Gregory S. Kanter, Prem Kumar

Published Jan 1, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Through simulation, we show how polarization mode dispersion has 3-10x less impact in quantum wrapper networking when dual-wavelength references are used to probe the birefringence of the fiber link under test.
DOI
10.1364/fio.2025.jw4a.15

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Quantum wrapper networking (QWN) is an emerging quantum networking protocol that wraps qubits in classical header bits to enable switching/routing, monitoring, and control without detecting the quantum signal. In this work, we encode header bits with two nonorthogonal polarization references to track and actively compensate for the changing birefringence of a 48 km deployed fiber link. Our method is analytical and deterministic, using motorized waveplates and a variable phase retarder to accurately and stably compensate the channel. We verify successful compensation by measuring the polarization stability of single photon qubits and the visibility of entangled photon pairs under both slow birefringence drift due to environmental fluctuations and large sudden changes designed to emulate those that occur during packet switching and rerouting over different fiber paths. For large, sudden changes, our compensator recovers the Stokes vector of single photons to within 10 degrees of the target state on the Poincaré sphere and restores the two-photon interference visibilities to their original levels on the deployed fiber link. Additionally, experiments monitoring long-term compensation over 44 hours show that active polarization compensation maintains the two-photon interference visibility, whereas disabling the compensator leads to visibility degradation over time, particularly in the diagonal-antidiagonal basis, where the average raw visibility decreases by 7.7%. These results add a polarization-control layer to QWN and illustrate that information-carrying headers can enable deterministic physical-layer compensation in the quantum channel over long-distance deployed fiber links.
Adapting the architecture and protocols of classical networks to quantum networking is challenging due to the quantum mechanical properties. In this paper, we utilize a Quantum Wrapper Networking architecture that enables transparent and interoperable transportation of quantum wrapper (QW) datagrams, consisting of quantum payloads and classical headers, over optical fiber networks. We experimentally demonstrate end-to-end transportation of QW datagrams in a three-node packet-switched optical network testbed. The header and payload of a QW datagram are multiplexed in time and wavelength, i.e., the 1561.41 nm header precedes the L-band payload. A QW switch/router performs packet switching by reading the headers, generating new headers, and routing the datagrams to their destinations without disturbing quantum information in the payload. We use 20 km fiber links from the source to two distinct destinations in the testbed. Our experiments show$>22coincidence−to−accidentalratio(CAR)forbothdestinationsattwodifferentwavelengthchannelsandclearvisibility,22 coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) for both destinations at two different wavelength channels and clear visibility,22coincidence−to−accidentalratio(CAR)forbothdestinationsattwodifferentwavelengthchannelsandclearvisibility,>$79%. We further investigate impairments such as chromatic dispersion and wavelength-dependent polarization rotations in the fiber. We observe that the classical headers' bit-error rate (BER) and the quantum payloads' CAR are correlated under the wavelength-independent channel attenuation. Thus, QW network control and management can utilize a type of performance monitoring. We also discuss the QW datagram design constraints and future fast packet switching implementations.