Work

Noise-Rejecting Photonic Integrated Circuit for Robust Quantum Random Number Generation

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Recent advancements in integrated photonics have shown great promise for the serial production of chip-scale quantum random number generators (QRNG). Considerable progress has been made towards developing fully on-chip QRNGs that exploit the interference of phase-randomized fields from two independent lasers. While a common alternative design, based on a single laser and interferometer, would further improve power consumption and ease of operation, monolithic integration of such a design has thus far faced challenges, including high losses and crosstalk. We solve these key challenges and report fast single-laser interferometric QRNGs integrated onto monolithic chips. By combining on-chip optical amplification with electronic common-mode rejection techniques, our photonic integrated circuits (PICs) stably convert the spontaneous emission phase noise of a diode laser into electronic pulses of high-contrast random intensity at GHz clock rates. Using real-time, hash-function-based randomness extraction, uniformly distributed, truly unpredictable random numbers are generated at a rate of 3 Gbps.

Source: Optical Fiber Communication Conference

DOI: 10.1364/ofc.2026.tu3k.6

Authors: P. R. Smith, D. G. Marangon, T. K. Paraiso, J. F. Dynes, A. J. Shields

Institution: Toshiba (United Kingdom)

Language: English

Topic: Quantum Information and Cryptography

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: UK Research and Innovation

Award: G2967627742