Weak Coherent Light Research Articles

A laser source driver in 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology for high speed quantum key distribution

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has rapidly developed recently. The repetition frequency of the QKD system increases from tens or hundreds of MHz to GHz. A laser diode (LD) operating in gain-switched mode is widely used as a weak coherent light source in a QKD system. We present an LD driver circuit fabricated in 0.18 μm SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. The circuit can operate at frequencies up to 2.5 GHz, satisfying the requirements of high-speed laser drives in practical QKD systems. The output current of the driver circuit can reach 100 mA when driving an LD whose input equivalent resistance is ∼21 Ω. The extinction ratio of the 1550-nm distributed feedback LD light source driven by our driver circuit reaches 23 dB at the operating frequency of 2.5 GHz, meeting the requirements of QKD systems. This circuit will be used in miniaturized QKD systems.

Generation of entangled photons with a second-order nonlinear photonic crystal and a beam splitter

We discuss the generation of entangled photons using a nonlinear photonic crystal and beam splitter. In our method, the photonic crystal is assumed to be composed of a material with a large second-order nonlinear optical susceptibility . Our proposal relies on two facts: (1) A nonlinear photonic crystal changes coherent incident light into squeezed light. (2) A beam splitter transforms the squeezed light into entangled light beams flying in two different directions. We estimate the yield efficiency of pairs of entangled photons per pulse of the very weak coherent light for our method at 0.0783 for a specific concrete example. Our method is more effective because the conversion efficiency (entangled biphotons per incident pump photons) in the spontaneous parametric downconversion is of the order of . The only drawback is that it requires very fine tuning of the frequency of signal photons fed into the photonic crystal; for example, an adjustment is given by Hz for the signal light of Hz. We investigate the application of entangled photons produced by our method to the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol, and we explore how to detect an eavesdropper. We suggest that our method is promising for decoy-state quantum key distribution using weak coherent light.

Proposal for a quantum random number generator using coherent light and a non-classical observable

The prototype quantum random number (random bit) generator (QRNG) consists of one photon at a time falling on a 50:50 beam splitter followed by random detection in one or the other output beams due to the irreducible probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. Due to the difficulties in producing single photons on demand, in practice, pulses of weak coherent (laser) light are used. In this paper, we take a different approach, one that uses moderate coherent light. It is shown that a QRNG can be implemented by performing photon-number parity measurements. For moderate coherent light, the probabilities of obtaining even or odd parity in photon counts are 0.5 each. Photon counting with single-photon resolution can be performed through use of a cascade of beam splitters and single-photon detectors, as was done recently in a photon-number parity-based interferometry experiment involving coherent light. We highlight the point that unlike most quantum-based random number generators, our proposal does not require the use of classical de-biasing algorithms or post-processing of the generated bit sequence.

非平衡光纤干涉仪的相位稳定方法研究

By using photons to carry quantum information, optical quantum information technology plays an essential role in quantum communication, quantum metrology, and linear optical quantum computing. In recent years, the unbalanced fiber interferometer has been widely applied in preparing, manipulating, and measuring photon qubits. However, the unbalanced fiber interferometer based on fiber devices is sensitive to the environment's thermal, mechanical, and acoustic noise. Thus, phase stabilization based on feedback control is essential in utilizing an unbalanced fiber interferometer. The existing phase stabilization methods typically employ a reference laser combined with optoelectronic detection, thus introducing additional noise to photon qubits. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a feedback control method to stabilize a phase in an unbalanced fiber interferometer by combining weak coherent reference light and single photon counting. Using theoretical analysis, we realized the phase stabilization of an unbalanced fiber Michelson interferometer with an arm-length difference of about 1 m. The results showed that the jitter of the stabilized phase is less than 0.042 rad, while the visibility of single-photon interference fringes is higher than 99%.

Electromagnetic field induced strong two photon blockade with hyperradiant behavior

We theoretically study the electromagnetic field controlled photon correlation and radiation properties in a two-atom-cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) system with different atom-cavity coupling strengths. When two three-level atoms are coherently driven by a probe field and a strong control field, forming a ladder type electromagnetically induced transparency configuration, there exist four different excitation pathways via the two photon processes, yielding four different frequencies for realizing two photon blockades. Carefully choosing the intensity of the control field, resonant single-photon and two-photon excitation can be achieved at the same probe field frequency. Thus, two photon blockade phenomenon can be significantly improved and the collective radiation behavior becomes superradiance or even hyperradiance. Our system presented here can be considered to be a converter of a weak coherent light to two correlated photons.

Implementation of weak measurement amplification with the weak coherent light and optomechanical system

Most studies for postselected weak measurement in optomechanical system focus on using a single photon as a measured system. However, we find that using weak coherent light instead of a single photon can also amplify the mirror’s position displacement of one photon. In the weak value amplification (WVA) regime, the weak value of one photon can lie outside the eigenvalue spectrum, proportional to the difference of the mirror’s position displacement between the successful and failed postselection and its successful postselection probability is dependent of the mean photon number of the coherent light and improved by adjusting it accordingly. Outside the WVA regime, the amplification limit can reach the level of the vacuum fluctuations, and when the mean photon number and the optomechanical coupling parameter are selected appropriately, its successful postselection probability becomes higher, which is beneficial to observe the maximum amplification value under the current experimental conditions. This result breaks the constraint that it is difficult to detect outside the WVA regime. This opens up a new regime for the study of a single photon nonlinearity in optomechanical system.

Optical response of atom chains beyond the limit of low light intensity: The validity of the linear classical oscillator model

Atoms subject to weak coherent incident light can be treated as coupled classical linear oscillators, supporting subradiant and superradiant collective excitation eigenmodes. We identify the limits of validity of this \emph{linear classical oscillator model} at increasing intensities of the drive by solving the quantum many-body master equation for coherent and incoherent scattering from a chain of trapped atoms. We show that deviations from the linear classical oscillator model depend sensitively on the resonance linewidths $\upsilon_\alpha$ of the collective eigenmodes excited by light, with the intensity at which substantial deviation occurs scaling as a powerlaw of $\upsilon_\alpha$. The linear classical oscillator model then becomes inaccurate at much lower intensities for subradiant collective excitations than superradiant ones, with an example system of seven atoms resulting in critical incident light intensities differing by a factor of 30 between the two cases. By individually exciting eigenmodes we find that this critical intensity has a $\upsilon_\alpha^{2.5}$ scaling for narrower resonances and more strongly interacting systems, while it approaches a $\upsilon_\alpha^3$ scaling for broader resonances and when the dipole-dipole interactions are reduced. The $\upsilon_\alpha^3$ scaling also corresponds to the semiclassical result whereby quantum fluctuations between the atoms have been neglected. We study both the case of perfectly mode-matched drives and the case of standing wave drives, with significant differences between the two cases appearing only at very subradiant modes and positions of Fano resonances.

Quantum key establishment via a multimode fiber.

Quantum communication aims to provide absolutely secure transmission of secret information. State-of-the-art methods encode symbols into single photons or coherent light with much less than one photon on average. For long-distance communication, typically a single-mode fiber is used and significant effort has been devoted already to increase the data carrying capacity of a single optical line. Here we propose and demonstrate a fundamentally new concept for remote key establishment. Our method allows high-dimensional alphabets using spatial degrees of freedom by transmitting information through a light-scrambling multimode fiber and exploiting the no-cloning theorem. Eavesdropper attacks can be detected without using randomly switched mutually unbiased bases. We prove the security against a common class of intercept-resend and beam-splitting attacks with single-photon Fock states and with weak coherent light. Since it is optical fiber based, our method allows to naturally extend secure communication to larger distances. We experimentally demonstrate this new type of key exchange method by encoding information into a few-photon light pulse decomposed over guided modes of an easily available multimode fiber.

Single-photon-level narrowband memory in a hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber

An experimental platform operating at the level of individual quanta and providing strong light-matter coupling is a key requirement for quantum information processing. In our work, we show that hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers filled with laser-cooled atoms might serve as such a platform, despite their typical complicated birefringence properties. To this end, we present a detailed theoretical and experimental study to identify a fiber with suitable properties to achieve operation at the single-photon level. In the fiber, we demonstrate the storage and on-demand retrieval as well as the creation of stationary light pulses, based on electromagnetically induced transparency, for weak coherent light pulses down to the single-photon level with an unconditional noise floor of 0.017(4) photons per pulse. These results clearly demonstrate the prospects of such a fiber-based platform for applications in quantum information networks.

Efficient quantum memory for single-photon polarization qubits

A quantum memory, for storing and retrieving flying photonic quantum states, is a key interface for realizing long-distance quantum communication and large-scale quantum computation. While many experimental schemes of high storage-retrieval efficiency have been performed with weak coherent light pulses, all quantum memories for true single photons achieved so far have efficiencies far below 50%, a threshold value for practical applications. Here, we report the demonstration of a quantum memory for single-photon polarization qubits with an efficiency of >85% and a fidelity of >99 %, basing on balanced two-channel electromagnetically induced transparency in laser-cooled rubidium atoms. For the single-channel quantum memory, the optimized efficiency for storing and retrieving single-photon temporal waveforms can be as high as 90.6 %. Our result pushes the photonic quantum memory closer to its practical applications in quantum information processing.

Characterizing High-Quality High-Dimensional Quantum Key Distribution by State Mapping Between Different Degrees of Freedom

Quantum key distribution (QKD) guarantees the secure communication between legitimate parties with quantum mechanics. High-dimensional QKD (HDQKD) not only increases the secret key rate but also tolerates higher quantum bit error rate (QBER). Many HDQKD experiments have been realized by utilizing orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) photons as the degree of freedom (DOF) of OAM of the photon is a prospective resource for HD quantum information. In this work we proposed and characterized that a high-quality HDQKD based on polarization-OAM hybrid states can be realized by utilizing state mapping between different DOFs. Both the preparation and measurement procedures of the proof-of-principle verification experiment are simple and stable. Our experiment verified that $(0.60\pm 0.06)\%$ QBER and $1.849\pm 0.008$ bits secret key rate per sifted signal can be achieved for a four-dimensional QKD with the weak coherent light source and decoy state method.

Slow-light-based optical frequency shifter

We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically a controllable way of shifting the frequency of an optical pulse by using a combination of spectral hole burning, slow light effect, and linear Stark effect in a rare-earth-ion doped crystal. We claim that the solid angle of acceptance of a frequency shift structure can be close to $2\pi$, which means that the frequency shifter could work not only for optical pulses propagating in a specific spatial mode but also for randomly scattered light. As the frequency shift is controlled solely by an external electric field, it works also for weak coherent light fields, and can e.g. be used as a frequency shifter for quantum memory devices in quantum communication.

Light on a beam splitter: More randomness with single photons

AbstractOne of the most fundamental quantum random number generators is implemented with light impinging onto a beam splitter, and two single photon detectors at its output. Often, this generator is described as “a photon which takes one or other path towards a detector”. The input state of light in conjunction with the detector response is relevant for the amount, the pattern, and the correlation of the generated clicks. Only a fraction of all generator outcomes, the min‐entropy, can be used as a further resource for true randomness. This paper addresses the difference in the common description with incoming single photons and the often implemented scheme with a weak coherent light source, such as an attenuated laser. For this very fundamental and widely used configuration the amount of usable entropy is compared. If single photons from an anti‐bunched light source are supplied, the amount of entropy is higher than for the case of a supplied coherent state – although the latter can be arbitrarily bright unlike the single photon source. image

A new scheme on improving the performance of the quantum key distribution with two-intensity weak coherent light

In this paper, we propose a new scheme on implementing the quantum key distribution with two-intensity weak coherent light and compare its performance with other existing methods. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that our new scheme can exceed almost all other existing decoy-state methods, e.g., the standard three-intensity decoy-state method and the usual passive decoy-state method, both in the transmission distance and in the final key generation rate, approaching very closely to the ideal case of using an infinite number of decoy states. Besides, we also consider the finite-size key effect. We demonstrate that under current experimental conditions, even when taking statistical fluctuation into account, a quite high key generation rate can still be obtained at very long transmission distance by applying our new scheme.

Photon Counting 3-D Object Recognition Using Digital Holography

We present an analysis of the recognition performance of 3-D objects reconstructed from digital holograms recorded under photon counting conditions. The digital holograms are computed by applying four-step phase-shifting techniques to interferograms recorded with weak coherent light. Recognition capability is analyzed as a function of the total number of photons by using a maximum-likelihood approach adapted to one-class classification problems. The likelihood is modeled assuming a Gaussian distribution, whose centroid corresponds to the highest value in a mixture of two Gaussian values. The recognition capability is studied both in terms of the axial distance and the lateral position of the reconstructed 3-D object.

Robustness of quantum communication based on a decoherence-free subspace using a counter-propagating weak coherent light pulse

We study distribution schemes for a polarization entangled photon pair based on a decoherence-free subspace over lossy quantum channels and propose an efficient scheme that is robust against not only collective phase noises but also general collective noises for two qubits. While the proposed scheme employs two photons to build the decoherence-free subspace, the success probability is proportional to the channel transmittance of a single photon with the aid of a counter-propagating weak coherent light pulse. The key ingredient in the scheme is found to be the reciprocity of the channel. The proposed scheme shares the rest of the properties with the previously proposed schemes; i.e., it can be realized by linear optical elements and it is robust against the fluctuations in the optical circuits used by the two parties.

Analysis of the time-energy entanglement of down-converted photon pairs by correlated single-photon interference

The time-energy entanglement of down-converted photon pairs is particularly difficult to characterize because direct measurements of photon arrival times are limited by the temporal resolution of photon detection. Here, we explore an alternative possibility of characterizing the temporal coherence of two-photon wavefunctions using single photon interference with weak coherent light. Specifically, this method makes use of the fact that down-conversion generates a coherent superposition of vacuum and two-photon states, so that the coincidence count rates for photon pairs after interference with weak coherent light are given by a superposition of the two-photon wavefunction from the down-conversion with the product wavefunction defined by the weak coherent references. By observing the frequency dependent interference pattern, it is possible to reconstruct the amplitudes and the phases of the two-photon wavefunction within the bandwidth of the reference pulses used in the single photon interferences. The correlated single photon interferences therefore provide a direct map of the entangled two-photon wavefunction generated in the down-conversion process.

Experimental demonstration of passive decoy state quantum key distribution

Passive decoy state quantum key distribution (PDS-QKD) has advantages in high-speed scenarios. We propose a modified model to simulate the PDS-QKD with a weak coherent light source based on Curty's theory [Opt. Lett. 34 3238 (2009)]. The modified model can provide better performance in a practical PDS-QKD system. Moreover, we report an experimental demonstration of the PDS-QKD of over 22.0-dB channel loss.

Design of a high-repetition rate photon source in a quantum key distribution system

Photon source with high-repetition quantum message transmission is needed in the quantum key distribution (QKD) system for long distance and high-repetition rate. We design high-repetition-rate weak coherent light by applying a practical QKD system with decoy states and polarization coding including an FPGA-based true random number generator, narrow pulse shaping under the modulation of high-speed true random number as well as its laser driver. The test indicates that the repetition rate of such light can attain a high performance of 650 MHz, pulse width less than 300 ps, stability of pulse amplitude better than 5%, and extinction rate better than 1000:1.

Photon-subtracted squeezed coherent state: nonclassicality and decoherence in thermal environment

We introduce the photon-subtracted squeezed coherent state (PSSCS), which is theoretically constructed by repeatedly subtracting photons from the squeezed coherent state (SCS) with squeezing parameter r and displacement amplitude α=|α|eiφ. Employing the normal ordering form of density operator of the SCS, we study the nonclassicality of the PSSCS by analyzing Mandel’s Q-parameter, quadratures squeezing, photon-number distribution (PND), and Wigner function (WF). We find that the PND in a PSSCS is a periodic function of φ with a period π and exhibits more remarkable oscillations than that of a SCS in the case of strong squeezing. The partial negative region of the WF is sensitive to r and |α|. The fidelity between PSSCS and SCS is analyzed, which manifests that larger photon subtraction number may result in lower fidelity. By virtue of the thermal entangled state representation the decoherence of the PSSCS in thermal environment is studied through the time evolution of the WF. The negative volume of the WF gradually diminishes with the increase of evolution time and thermal photon number, respectively. The study of the PSSCS shows that generating new photon-number-controllable nonclassical states from a weak coherent light may be realized by subtracting suitable photons from a SCS.