Chip-based quantum key distribution

By P. Sibson, C. Erven, M. Godfrey, S. Miki, T. Yamashita, M. Fujiwara, Masahide Sasaki, H. Terai, Michael G. Tanner, Chandra M. Natarajan and 3 more. Nature Communications, 2015

411 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Improvement in secure transmission of information is an urgent need for governments, corporations and individuals. Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises security based on the laws of physics and has rapidly grown from proof-of-concept to robust demonstrations and deployment of commercial systems. Despite these advances, QKD has not been widely adopted, and large-scale deployment will likely require chip-based devices for improved performance, miniaturization and enhanced functionality. Here we report low error rate, GHz clocked QKD operation of an indium phosphide transmitter chip and a silicon oxynitride receiver chip—monolithically integrated devices using components and manufacturing processes from the telecommunications industry. We use the reconfigurability of these devices to demonstrate three prominent QKD protocols—BB84, Coherent One Way and Differential Phase Shift—with performance comparable to state-of-the-art. These devices, when combined with integrated single photon detectors, pave the way for successfully integrating QKD into future telecommunications networks. Quantum key distribution has not been widely adopted in part due to technical hurdles preventing it being fully integrated in classical communication networks. Here the authors report quantum key distribution between two photonic chips manufactured with state-of-the-art telecoms industry processes.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37c710fa3bbac1a5d0d84c051fa9ef4df2e3fe7c

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In Artificial Intelligence

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Silicon Quantum Photonics (2015, methodology): “This fact is widely used in quantum key distribution systems [19], [20] which encode information on single photons.”
Quantum computing: A taxonomy, systematic review and future directions (2020, background): “[160] identified a low error rate; high speed clocked QKD operation of indium phosphide transmitter chip useful in the telecommunications industry.”
Integrated photonic quantum technologies (2019, methodology): “[37] , Macmillan Publishers Ltd; b, ref.”
Practical challenges in quantum key distribution (2016, neutral): “Two main integration platforms are currently being explored, namely silicon (Si) 71 and indium phosphide (InP), 72 whereas alternative techniques include lithium niobate (LiNbO 3 ) integration and glass waveguide technologies.”
Review of Silicon Photonics Technology and Platform Development (2021, background): “actively explored, with SiP-based QKD networks [134], [135], artificial neural network and optical computing [136], [137] already being demonstrated.”
One-step quantum secure direct communication. (2021, neutral): “Mean-while, the chip-based QKD system has also been constructed [13].”