Multi-Channel Physical Random Bits Generation Using a Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser Under Chaotic Optical Injection

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate multi-channel physical random bits (PRBs) generation by utilizing chaotic outputs from two linear polarization modes in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) under a chaotic optical injection. The polarization-resolved chaotic signal is obtained with a master-VCSEL subject to optical feedback, and then injects into a slave-VCSEL for driving its two linear polarization modes into chaotic state. We analyze the influences of injection parameters on bandwidth, complexity, and the correlation of two-channel chaotic signals. By using the two chaotic signal outputs from the slave-VCSEL under optimized parameters as entropy sources, we have obtained the PRBs at the dual-channel rate of 160 Gbits/s by adopting the $m$ least significant bits extraction with logical exclusive-OR (XOR) post-processing. Further utilizing the $n$ -bit cross-merging method, the PRB at a rate of 320 Gbits/s could be obtained.