Interferometry with Faraday mirrors for quantum cryptography

Effect of imperfect Faraday mirrors on security of a Faraday-Michelson quantum cryptography system

The one-way Faraday-Michelson system is a very useful practical quantum cryptography system where Faraday mirrors(FMs) play an important role. In this paper we analyze the security of this system against imperfect FMs. We consider the security loophole caused by the imperfect FMs in Alice's and Bob's security zones. Then we implement a passive Faraday mirror attack in this system. By changing the values of the imperfection parameters of Alice's FMs, we calculate the quantum bit error rate between Alice and Bob induced by Eve and the probability that Eve obtains outcomes successfully. It is sho…

``Plug and play'' systems for quantum cryptography

We present a time-multiplexed interferometer based on Faraday mirrors, and apply it to quantum key distribution. The interfering pulses follow exactly the same spatial path, ensuring very high stability and self balancing. Use of Faraday mirrors compensates automatically any birefringence effects and polarization dependent losses in the transmitting fiber. First experimental results show a fringe visibility of 0.9984 for a 23km-long interferometer, based on installed telecom fibers.

A Qubit on the Faraday Mirror

In the context of Quantum Information (QI) the ''Faraday Mirror'' acts as a non-universal NOT Gate. As such its behaviour complies with the principles of quantum mechanics. This non trivial result, at the core of some recent misinterpretations in the QI community, has been reached by a thorough experimental investigation of the properties of the device including the adoption of modern Quantum Process Tomography. In addition, the ''universal optical compensation'' method devised by Mario Martinelli, of common use in long distance quantum-cryptography, has been fully investigated theoretically a…

Autocompensating Quantum Cryptography

Quantum cryptographic key distribution (QKD) uses extremely faint light pulses to carry quantum information between two parties (Alice and Bob), allowing them to generate a shared, secret cryptographic key. Autocompensating QKD systems automatically and passively compensate for uncontrolled time dependent variations of the optical fiber properties by coding the information as a differential phase between orthogonally-polarized components of a light pulse sent on a round trip through the fiber, reflected at mid-course using a Faraday mirror. We have built a prototype system based on standard te…

Field Experiment on a Robust Hierarchical Metropolitan Quantum Cryptography Network

A hierarchical metropolitan quantum cryptography network upon the inner-city commercial telecom fiber cables is reported in this paper. The seven-user network contains a four-node backbone net with one node acting as the subnet gateway, a two-user subnet and a single-fiber access link, which is realized by the Faraday-Michelson Interferometer set-ups. The techniques of the quantum router, optical switch and trusted relay are assembled here to guarantee the feasibility and expandability of the quantum cryptography network. Five nodes of the network are located in the government departments and …

通过非线性干涉仪利用线性光谱相位进行量子态工程

State Engineering via Nonlinear Interferometry with Linear Spectral Phases

本文提出了一种利用非线性干涉仪和线性光谱相位生成高维光谱四维和高维纠缠态的协议，同时考虑了损耗和重叠损失对干涉可见度的影响。