Transmission of O-band wavelength-division-multiplexed heralded photons over a noise-corrupted optical fiber channel

We transmitted O-band heralded photons over 10 km of optical fiber in a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating the feasibility of using heralded photons to improve the noise tolerance of quantum key distribution. In our experiment, the optical fiber channel was corrupted by noise photons to the e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Mao Tong., Lim, Han Chuen.
Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100951
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18596
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We transmitted O-band heralded photons over 10 km of optical fiber in a proof-of-concept experiment demonstrating the feasibility of using heralded photons to improve the noise tolerance of quantum key distribution. In our experiment, the optical fiber channel was corrupted by noise photons to the extent that if we had used an attenuated laser as the photon source, a photon signal-to-noise ratio of < 4.0 at the receiver, corresponding to a quantum bit-error rate of > 10.0%, would have prevented the effective generation of secure keys. Using a photon heralding scheme, the photon signal-to-noise ratio in our experiment was shown to be > 7.8. This corresponds to a quantum bit-error rate of < 5.7%, which is good enough for distilling secure keys. In addition, we showed that it is possible to incorporate wavelength-division-multiplexing into the photon heralding scheme to improve overall key rate. We discussed and clarified the prospects and limitations of the photon heralding scheme for noise-tolerant quantum key distribution.