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Practical implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD) have been shown to be subject to various detector side-channel attacks that compromise the promised unconditional security. Most notable is a general class of attacks adopting the use of faked-state photons as in the detector-control and, more broadly, the intercept-resend attacks. In this paper, we present a simple scheme to overcome such class of attacks: A legitimate user, Bob, uses a polarization randomizer at his gateway to distort an ancillary polarization of a phase-encoded photon in a bidirectional QKD configuration. Passing through the randomizer once on the way to his partner, Alice, and again in the opposite direction, the polarization qubit of the genuine photon is immune to randomization. However, the polarization state of a photon from an intruder, Eve, to Bob is randomized and hence directed to a detector in a different path, whereupon it triggers an alert. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that, using commercial off-the-shelf detectors, it can be made impossible for Eve to avoid triggering the alert, no matter what faked-state of light she uses., Comment: Quantum encryption, bidirectional quantum key distribution, detector control, intercept and resend attacks, faked state photons

The generation of high-fidelity polarization-entangled photon pairs, to date, has been demonstrated on specific spatial modes or over relatively narrow apertures. We put forward and demonstrate an experimental scheme to extend the temporal and spatial indistinguishability of polarization-entangled photons over wide emission angles, which can be applied to cover the whole SPDC cone. Over such wide angular extent, while the time-delay map is almost flat which renders the conventional compensation via a birefringent element an appropriate approach, the relative-phase map -- verified as a quadratic function -- necessitates a tunable compensation paradigm. Here, to do so, we employ a phase-only two-dimensional spatial light modulator (2D SLM) loaded by the complementary of the relative phase map to equalize the phase variations for one third of the noncollinear spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) emission. After eliminating the temporal and spatial distinguishability over the 2D SLM area, a 97% polarization visibility is verified for the entangled photon pairs scattered widely across the SPDC cone., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We present a scheme to encode M extra classical bits to a dense-coded pair of photons. By tuning the delay of an entangled pair of photons to one of 2^M time-bins and then applying one of the quantum dense coding protocols, a receiver equipped with a synchronized clock of reference is able to decode M bits (via classical time-bin encoding) + 2 bits (via quantum dense coding). This protocol, yet simple, does not dispense several special features of the used programmable delay apparatus to maintain the coherence of the two-photon state. While this type of time-domain encoding may be thought to be ideally of boundless photonic capacity (by increasing the number of available time-bins), errors due to the environmental noise and the imperfect devices and channel evolve with the number of time-bins., Comment: SPIE 2016

High flux of hyperentangled photons entails collecting the two-photon emission over relatively wide extent in frequency and transverse space within which the photon pairs are simultaneously entangled in multiple degrees of freedom. In this paper, we present a numerical approach to determining the spatial-spectral relative-phase and time-delay maps of hyperentangled photons all over the spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) emission cone. We consider the hyperentangled-photons produced by superimposing noncollinear SPDC emissions of two crossed and coherently-pumped nonlinear crystals. We adopt a vectorial representation for all parameters of concern. This enables us to study special settings such as the self-compensation via oblique pump incidence. While rigorous quantum treatment of SPDC emission requires Gaussian state representation, in low-gain regime (like the case of the study), it is well approximated to the first order to superposition of vacuum and two-photon states. The relative phase and time-delay maps are then calculated between the two-photon wavepackets created along symmetrical locations of the crystals. Assuming monochromatic plane-wave pump field, the mutual signal-idler relations like energy conservation and transverse-momentum conservation define well one of the two-photon with reference to its conjugate. The weaker conservation of longitudinal momentum (due to relatively thin crystals) allows two-photon emission directions coplanar with the pump beam while spreading around the perfect phase-matching direction. While prior works often adopt first-order approximation, it is shown that the relative-phase map is a very well approximated to a quadratic function in the polar angle of the two-photon emission while negligibly varying with the azimuthal angle.

In this paper, we numerically demonstrate a new extraction scheme for generating ultra-fast physically random sequence of bits. For this purpose, we utilize a dual-channel optical chaos source with suppressed time delayed (TD) signature in both the intensity and the phase of its two channels. The proposed technique uses M 1-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to compare the level of the chaotic intensity signal at time t with its levels after incommensurable delay-interval Tm, where m = {1,2,...,M}. The binary output of each 1-bit ADC is then sampled by a positive-edge-triggered D flip-flop. The clock sequence applied to the flip-flops is relatively delayed such that the rising edge of the clock triggering the m flip-flop precedes the rising edge of the clock of a subsequent m+1 flip-flop by a fixed period. The outputs of all flip-flops are then combined by means of a parity-check logic. Numerical simulations are carried out using values of parameters at which TD signature is suppressed for chosen values of setup parameters. The 15 statistical tests in Special Publication 800-22 from NIST are applied to the generated random bits in order to examine the randomness quality of these bits for different values of M. The results show that all tests are passed from M = 1 to M = 39 at sampling rate up to 34.5 GHz which indicates that the maximum generation rate of random bits is 2.691 Tb/sec using a chaotic source of single VCSEL and without employing any pre-processing techniques.