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De-Yong He

Publications and source records attributed to De-Yong He.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Transverse mode-encoded quantum gate on a silicon photonic chip

As an important degree of freedom (DoF) in integrated photonic circuits, the orthogonal transverse mode provides a promising and flexible way to increasing communication capability, for both classical and quantum information processing. To construct large-scale on-chip multimode multi-DoF quantum systems, a transverse mode-encoded controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate is necessary. Here, through design and integrate transverse mode-dependent directional coupler and attenuators on a silicon photonic chip, we demonstrate the first multimode implementation of a two-qubit quantum gate. With the aid of state preparation and analysis parts, we show the ability of the gate to entangle two separated transverse mode qubits with an average fidelity of $0.89\pm0.02$ and the achievement of 10 standard deviations of violations in the quantum nonlocality verification. In addition, a fidelity of $0.82\pm0.01$ was obtained from quantum process tomography used to completely characterize the CNOT gate. Our work paves the way for universal transverse mode-encoded quantum operations and large-scale multimode multi-DoF quantum systems.

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Quantum key distribution over scattering channel

Scattering of light by cloud, haze, and fog decreases the transmission efficiency of communication channels in quantum key distribution (QKD), reduces the system's practical security, and thus constrains the deployment of free-space QKD. Here, we employ the wavefront shaping technology to compensate distorted optical signals in high-loss scattering quantum channels and fulfill a polarization-encoded BB84 QKD experiment. With this quantum channel compensation technology, we achieve a typical enhancement of about 250 in transmission efficiency and improve the secure key rate from 0 to $1.85\times10^{-6}$ per sifted key. The method and its first time validation show the great potential to expand the territory of QKD systems from lossless channels to highly scattered ones and therefore enhances the deployment ability of global quantum communication network.

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Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution for nonstandalone networks

Untrusted node networks initially implemented by measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol are a crucial step on the roadmap of the quantum Internet. Considering extensive QKD implementations of trusted node networks, a workable upgrading tactic of existing networks toward MDI networks needs to be explicit. Here, referring to the nonstandalone (NSA) network of 5G, we propose an NSA-MDI scheme as an evolutionary selection for existing phase-encoding BB84 networks. Our solution can upgrade the BB84 networks and terminals that employ various phase-encoding schemes to immediately support MDI without hardware changes. This cost-effective upgrade effectively promotes the deployment of MDI networks as a step of untrusted node networks while taking full advantage of existing networks. In addition, the diversified demands on security and bandwidth are satisfied, and network survivability is improved.

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Security Analysis and Improvement of Source Independent Quantum Random Number Generators with Imperfect Devices

A quantum random number generator (QRNG) as a genuine source of randomness is essential in many applications, such as number simulation and cryptography. Recently, a source-independent quantum random number generator (SI-QRNG), which can generate secure random numbers with untrusted sources, has been realized. However, the measurement loopholes of the trusted but imperfect devices used in SI-QRNGs have not yet been fully explored, which will cause security problems, especially in high-speed systems. Here, we point out and evaluate the security loopholes of practical imperfect measurement devices in SI-QRNGs. We also provide corresponding countermeasures to prevent these information leakages by recalculating the conditional minimum entropy and adding a monitor. Furthermore, by taking into account the finite-size effect,we show that the influence of the afterpulse can exceed that of the finite-size effect with the large number of sampled rounds. Our protocol is simple and effective, and it promotes the security of SI-QRNG in practice as well as the compatibility with high-speed measurement devices, thus paving the way for constructing ultrafast and security-certified commercial SI-QRNG systems.

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Quantum hacking perceiving for quantum key distribution using temporal ghost imaging

Quantum key distribution (QKD) can generate secure key bits between remote users with quantum mechanics. However, the gap between the theoretical model and practical realizations gives eavesdroppers opportunities to intercept secret key. The most insidious attacks, known as quantum hacking, are the ones with no significant discrepancy of the measurement results using side-channel loopholes of QKD systems. Depicting full-time-scale characteristics of the quantum signals, the quantum channel, and the QKD system can provide legitimate users extra capabilities to defeat malicious attacks. For the first time, we propose the method exploring temporal ghost imaging (TGI) scheme to perceive quantum hacking with temporal fingerprints and experimentally verify its validity. The scheme presents a common approach to promote QKD's practical security from a new perspective of signals and systems.

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Efficient decoy-states for the reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution

Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) is a novel protocol which eliminates all possible attacks on detector side and necessity of reference-frame alignment in source sides. However, its performance may degrade notably due to statistical fluctuations, since more parameters, e.g. yields and error rates for mismatched-basis events, must be accumulated to monitor the security. In this work, we find that the original decoy-states method estimates these yields over pessimistically since it ignores the potential relations between different bases. Through processing parameters of different bases jointly, the performance of RFI-MDI-QKD is greatly improved in terms of secret key rate and achievable distance when statistical fluctuations are considered. Our results pave an avenue towards practical RFI-MDI-QKD.

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Quantum key distribution with dissipative Kerr soliton generated by on-chip microresonators

Quantum key distribution (QKD) can distribute symmetric key bits between remote legitimate users with the guarantee of quantum mechanics principles. For practical applications, the compact and robust photonic components for QKD are essential, and there are increasing attention to integrate the source, detector and modulators on a photonic chip. However, the massive and parallel QKD based on wavelength multiplexing are still challenge, due to the limited coherent light sources on the chip. Here, we introduce the Kerr dissipative soliton in a microresonator, which provides the locked coherent frequency comb with 49GHz frequency spacing, for QKD. We demonstrate the parallel QKD by demulplexing the coherent comb lines form the soliton, and showing the potential of Gbps secret key rate if the hundreds of channels covering C and L bands are fully exploited. The demonstrated soliton based QKD architecture are compatible with the efforts of quantum photonic integrated circuits, which are compact, robust and low-cost, and provides a competitive platform of practical QKD chip.

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Distribution of high-dimensional orbital angular momentum entanglement at telecom wavelength over 1km of optical fibre

High-dimensional entanglement has demonstrated potential for increasing channel capacity and resistance to noise in quantum information processing. However, its distribution is a challenging task, imposing a severe restriction on its application. Here we report the first distribution of three-dimensional orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement via a 1-km-long optical fibre. Using an actively-stabilizing phase pre-compensation technique, we successfully transport one photon of a three-dimensional OAM entangled photon pair through the fibre. The distributed OAM entangled state still shows a fidelity up to 71\% with respect to the three-dimensional maximal-entangled-state (MES). In addition, we certify that the high-dimensional quantum entanglement survives the transportation by violating a generalized Bell inequality, obtaining a violation of $\sim3$ standard deviations with $I_{3}=2.12\pm0.04$. The method we developed can be extended to higher OAM dimension and larger distances in principle. Our results make a significant step towards future OAM-based high-dimensional long-distance quantum communication.

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Hacking the quantum key distribution system by exploiting the avalanche transition region of single photon detectors

Avalanche photodiode based single photon detectors, as crucial and practical components, are widely used in quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. For effective detection, most of these SPDs are operated in the gated mode, in which the gate is added to obtain high avalanche gain, and is removed to quench the avalanche. The avalanche transition region (ATR) is a certain existence in the process of adding and removing the gate. We first experimentally investigate the characteristic of the ATR, including in the commercial SPD and high-speed SPD, and then propose an ATR attack to control the detector. In the experiment of hacking the plug-and-play QKD system, Eve only introduces less than 0.5 % quantum bit error rate, and almost leaves no traces of her presence including the photocurrent and afterpulse probability. We finally give possible countermeasures against this attack.

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Robust countermeasure against detector control attack in practical quantum key distribution system

In real-life implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD), the physical systems with unwanted imperfections would be exploited by an eavesdropper. Based on imperfections in the detectors, detector control attacks have been successfully launched on several QKD systems, and attracted widespread concerns. Here, we propose a robust countermeasure against these attacks just by introducing a variable attenuator in front of the detector. This countermeasure is not only effective against the attacks with blinding light, but also robust against the attacks without blinding light which are more concealed and threatening. Different from previous technical improvements, the single photon detector in our countermeasure model is treated as a blackbox, and the eavesdropper can be detected by statistics of the detection and error rates of the QKD system. Besides theoretical proof, the countermeasure is also supported by an experimental demonstration. Our countermeasure is general in sense that it is independent of the technical details of the detector, and can be easily applied to the existing QKD systems.

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Improving the performance of Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution

Among the various versions of the twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) protocol [M.Lucamarini, Z. Yuan, J. Dynes, and A. Shields, Nature (London) 557, 400 (2018)] that can overcome the rate-distance limit, the TF-QKD without phase postselection proposed by Cui et al. [Phys. Rev. Appl. 11, 034053 (2019)] is an elegant TF-QKD that can provide high key rates since the postselection of global phases has been removed. However, the achievable distance of this variant is shorter than that of the original phase-matching QKD [X. Ma, P. Zeng, and H. Zhou, Phys. Rev. X 8, 031043 (2018)]. In this paper, we propose a method for improving its performance by introducing an additional decoy mode. The upper bound of the information leakage can be more tightly estimated; hence, both the key rate and the achievable distance are significantly improved. Interestingly, the operation of the proposed additional decoy mode is the same as that of the code mode; hence, it does not introduce difficulties into the experimental system. In addition, the improvement is substantial with finite decoy states, which is meaningful in practice.

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Practical issues of twin-field quantum key distribution

Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution(TF-QKD) protocol and its variants, such as Phase-Matching QKD(PM-QKD), sending or not QKD(SNS-QKD) and No Phase Post-Selection TF-QKD(NPP-TFQKD), are very promising for long-distance applications. However, there are still some gaps between theory and practice in these protocols. Concretely, a finite-key size analysis is still missing, and the intensity fluctuations are not taken into account. To address the finite-key size effect, we first give the key rate of NPP-TFQKD against collective attack in finite-key size region and then prove it can be against coherent attack. To deal with the intensity fluctuations, we present an analytical formula of 4-intensity decoy state NPP-TFQKD and a practical intensity fluctuation model. Finally, through detailed simulations, we show NPP-TFQKD can still keep its superiority of high key rate and long achievable distance.

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Beating the fundamental rate-distance limit in a proof-of-principle quantum key distribution system

With the help of quantum key distribution (QKD), two distant peers are able to share information-theoretically secure key bits. Increasing key rate is ultimately significant for the applications of QKD in lossy channel. However, it has proved that there is a fundamental rate-distance limit, named linear bound, which limits the performance of all existing repeaterless protocols and realizations. Surprisingly, a recently proposed protocol, called twin-field (TF) QKD can beat linear bound with no need of quantum repeaters. Here, we present the first implementation of TF-QKD protocol and demonstrate its advantage of beating linear bound at the channel distance of 300 km. In our experiment, a modified TF-QKD protocol which does not assume phase post-selection is considered, and thus higher key rate than the original one is expected. After well controlling the phase evolution of the twin fields travelling hundreds of kilometers of optical fibres, the implemented system achieves high-visibility single-photon interference, and allows stable and high-rate measurement-device-independent QKD. Our experimental demonstration and results confirm the feasibility of the TF-QKD protocol and its prominent superiority in long distance key distribution services.

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Achieving Heisenberg-scaling precision with projective measurement on single photons

It has been suggested that both quantum superpositions and nonlinear interactions are important resources for quantum metrology. However, to date the different roles that these two resources play in the precision enhancement are not well understood. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a Heisenberg-scaling metrology to measure the parameter governing the nonlinear coupling between two different optical modes. The intense mode with n (more than 10^6 in our work) photons manifests its effect through the nonlinear interaction strength which is proportional to its average photon-number. The superposition state of the weak mode, which contains only a single photon, is responsible for both the linear Hamiltonian and the scaling of the measurement precision. By properly preparing the initial state of single photon and making projective photon-counting measurement, the extracted classical Fisher information (FI) can saturate the quantum FI embedded in the combined state after coupling, which is ~ n^2 and leads to a practical precision ~ 1.2/n. Free from the utilization of entanglement, our work paves a way to realize Heisenberg-scaling precision when only a linear Hamiltonian is involved.

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Practical gigahertz quantum key distribution robust against channel disturbance

Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides an attractive solution for secure communication. However, channel disturbance severely limits its application when a QKD system is transfered from the laboratory to the field. Here, a high-speed Faraday-Sagnac-Michelson QKD system is proposed that can automatically compensate for the channel polarization disturbance, which largely avoids the intermittency limitations of environment mutation. Over a 50-km fiber channel with 30-Hz polarization scrambling, the practicality of this phase-coding QKD system was characterized with an interference fringe visibility of 99:35% over 24 hours, and a stable secure key rate of 306k bits/s over 7 days without active polarization alignment.

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Heisenberg-scaling measurement of the single-photon Kerr non-linearity using mixed states

Improving the precision of measurements is a significant scientific challenge. The challenge is twofold: first, overcoming noise that limits the precision given a fixed amount of a resource, N, and second, improving the scaling of precision over the standard quantum limit (SQL), 1/\sqrt{N}, and ultimately reaching a Heisenberg scaling (HS), 1/N. Here we present and experimentally implement a new scheme for precision measurements. Our scheme is based on a probe in a mixed state with a large uncertainty, combined with a post-selection of an additional pure system, such that the precision of the estimated coupling strength between the probe and the system is enhanced. We performed a measurement of a single photon's Kerr non-linearity with an HS, where an ultra-small Kerr phase of around 6 *10^{-8} rad was observed with an unprecedented precision of around 3.6* 10^{-10} rad. Moreover, our scheme utilizes an imaginary weak-value, the Kerr non-linearity results in a shift of the mean photon number of the probe, and hence, the scheme is robust to noise originating from the self-phase modulation.

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A resource-saving realization of the polarization-independent orbital-angular-momentum-preserving tunable beam splitter

Tunable beam splitter (TBS) is a fundamental component which has been widely used in optical experiments. We realize a polarization-independent orbital-angular-momentum-preserving TBS based on the combination of modified polarization beam splitters and half-wave plates. Greater than 30 dB of the extinction ratio of tunableness, lower than $6\%$ of polarization dependence and more than 20 dB of the extinction ratio of OAM preservation show the relatively good performance of the TBS. In addition, the TBS can save about 3/4 of the optical elements compared with the existing scheme to implement the same function\cite{yang2016experimental}, which makes it have great advantages in scalable applications. Using this TBS, we experimentally built a Sagnac interferometer with the mean visibility of more than $99\%$, which demonstrates its potential applications in quantum information process, such as quantum cryptography.

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Non-Markovian property of afterpulsing effect in single-photon avalanche detector

The single-photon avalanche photodiode(SPAD) has been widely used in research on quantum optics. The afterpulsing effect, which is an intrinsic character of SPAD, affects the system performance in most experiments and needs to be carefully handled. For a long time, afterpulsing has been presumed to be determined by the pre-ignition avalanche. We studied the afterpulsing effect of a commercial InGaAs/InP SPAD (The avalanche photodiode model is: Princeton Lightwave PGA-300) and demonstrated that its afterpulsing is non-Markovian, with a memory effect in the avalanching history. Theoretical analysis and experimental results clearly indicate that the embodiment of this memory effect is the afterpulsing probability, which increases as the number of ignition-avalanche pulses increase. This conclusion makes the principle of the afterpulsing effect clearer and is instructive to the manufacturing processes and afterpulsing evaluation of high-count-rate SPADs. It can also be regarded as a fundamental premise to handle the afterpulsing signals in many applications, such as quantum communication and quantum random number generation.

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