Challenges in Quantum Photonics

Sonia Mary Buckley, Michelle S. Stephens, J.H. Lehman

For quantum applications, it is important to generate quantum states of light and detect them with extremely high efficiency. For future applications, it also important to do this at scale. This presents many engineering and metrology challenges. This paper discusses some of the open challenges and opportunities in single photon detector efficiency measurements, including the challenges ofmetrology for waveguide-integrated detectors on photonic circuits.

Christophe Couteau

Davide G. Marangon, Taofiq K. Paraïso, Thomas Roger +6 more

Integrated photonics can enable a wide deployment of quantum cryptography but this integration is technologically challenging. We addressed the challenges and built a complete, real-time and deployable quantum key distribution system based on integrated photonics.

Mohamed Benyoucef

Boris Škorić, Allard P. Mosk, Pepijn W. H. Pinkse

The concept of quantum-secure readout of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) has recently been realized experimentally in an optical PUF system. We analyze the security of this system under the strongest type of classical attack: the challenge estimation attack. The adversary performs a measurement on the challenge quantum state in order to learn as much about it as he can. Using this knowledge, he then tries to reconstruct the challenge and to emulate the PUF. We consider quadrature measurements, which are the most informative practical measurements known to us. We prove that even under this attack the expected number of photons detected in the verification mechanism is approximately a factor S + 1 too low; here S is the Quantum Security Parameter, defined as the number of modes in the optical system divided by the number of photons in the challenge. The photon count allows for a reliable distinction between an authentic PUF and a challenge estimation attack.