Frequency-bin-encoded entanglement-based quantum key distribution in a reconfigurable frequency-multiplexed network

authored by

Anahita Khodadad Kashi, Michael Kues

Abstract

Large-scale quantum networks require dynamic and resource-efficient solutions to reduce system complexity with maintained security and performance to support growing number of users over large distances. Current encoding schemes including time-bin, polarization, and orbital angular momentum, suffer from the lack of reconfigurability and thus scalability issues. Here, we demonstrate the first-time implementation of frequency-bin-encoded entanglement-based quantum key distribution and a reconfigurable distribution of entanglement using frequency-bin encoding. Specifically, we demonstrate a novel scalable frequency-bin basis analyzer module that allows for a passive random basis selection as a crucial step in quantum protocols, and importantly equips each user with a single detector rather than four detectors. This minimizes massively the resource overhead, reduces the dark count contribution, vulnerability to detector side-channel attacks, and the detector imbalance, hence providing an enhanced security. Our approach offers an adaptive frequency-multiplexing capability to increase the number of channels without hardware overhead, enabling increased secret key rate and reconfigurable multi-user operations. In perspective, our approach enables dynamic resource-minimized quantum key distribution among multiple users across diverse network topologies, and facilitates scalability to large-scale quantum networks.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Photonics
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines

Type

Article

Journal

Light: Science and Applications

Volume

14

ISSN

2095-5545

Publication date

16.01.2025

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01696-8 (Access: Open)