Characterising higher-order phase correlations in gain-switched laser sources with application to quantum key distribution
Multi-photon emissions in laser sources represent a serious threat for the security of quantum key distribution (QKD). While the decoy-state technique allows to solve this problem, it requires uniform phase randomisation of the emitted pulses. However, gain-switched lasers operating at high repetiti...
| Autores: | , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/391756 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/391756 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Quantum communications Optical phase correlations Quantum cryptography Gain-switched laser Quantum key distribution |
| Sumario: | Multi-photon emissions in laser sources represent a serious threat for the security of quantum key distribution (QKD). While the decoy-state technique allows to solve this problem, it requires uniform phase randomisation of the emitted pulses. However, gain-switched lasers operating at high repetition rates do not fully satisfy this requirement, as residual photons in the laser cavity introduce correlations between the phases of consecutive pulses. Here, we introduce experimental schemes to characterise the phase probability distribution of the emitted pulses, and demonstrate that an optimisation task over interferometric measures suffices in determining the impact of arbitrary order correlations, which ultimately establishes the security level of the implementation according to recent security proofs. We expect that our findings may find usages beyond QKD as well. |
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