Yanbao Zhang

Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols with threshold detectors are driving high-performance QKD demonstrations. The corresponding security proofs usually assume that all physical detectors have the same detection efficiency. However, the efficiencies of the detectors used in practice might show a mismatch depending on the manufacturing and setup of these detectors. A mismatch can also be induced as the different spatial-temporal modes of an incoming signal might couple differently to a detector. Here we develop a method that allows to provide security proofs without the usual assumption. Our method can take the detection-efficiency mismatch into account without having to restrict the attack strategy of the adversary. Especially, we do not rely on any photon-number cut-off of incoming signals such that our security proof is complete. Though we consider polarization encoding in the demonstration of our method, the method applies to a variety of coding mechanisms, including time-bin encoding, and also allows for general manipulations of the spatial-temporal modes by the adversary. We thus can close the long-standing question how to provide a valid, complete security proof of a QKD setup with characterized efficiency mismatch. Our method also shows that in the absence of efficiency mismatch, the key rate increases if the loss due to detection inefficiency is assumed to be outside of the adversary's control, as compared to the view where for a security proof this loss is attributed to the action of the adversary.

With the growing availability of experimental loophole-free Bell tests, it has become possible to implement a new class of device-independent random number generators whose output can be certified to be uniformly random without requiring a detailed model of the quantum devices used. However, all previous experiments require many input bits in order to certify a small number of output bits, and it is an outstanding challenge to develop a system that generates more randomness than is used. Here, we devise a device-independent spot-checking protocol which uses only uniform bits as input. Implemented with a photonic loophole-free Bell test, we can produce 24% more certified output bits (1,181,264,237 bits) than consumed input bits (953,301,640 bits), which is 5 orders of magnitude more efficient than our previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 010505 (2020)]. The experiment ran for 91.0 hours, creating randomness at an average rate of 3,606 bits/second with a soundness error bounded by 5.7e-7 in the presence of classical side information. Our system will allow for greater trust in public sources of randomness, such as randomness beacons, and the protocol may one day enable high-quality sources of private randomness as the device footprint shrinks.

Applications of randomness such as private key generation and public randomness beacons require small blocks of certified random bits on demand. Device-independent quantum random number generators can produce such random bits, but existing quantum-proof protocols and loophole-free implementations suffer from high latency, requiring many hours to produce any random bits. Here we develop a broadly applicable framework, quantum probability estimation, for yielding efficient quantum-proof protocols. The framework is general and encompasses methods from previous works [Miller and Shi, SIAM Journal on Computing 46, 1304 (2017); Arnon-Friedman et al., Nature Communications 9, 459 (2018)]. Quantum probability estimation can adapt to changing experimental conditions, allows stopping the experiment as soon as the prespecified randomness goal is achieved, and can tolerate imperfect knowledge of the input distribution. Moreover, we demonstrate device-independent quantum randomness generation from a loophole-free Bell test with quantum probability estimation, obtaining multiple blocks of 512 random bits with an average experiment time of less than 5 minutes per block and with certified error bounded by $2^{-64}\approx 5.42\times 10^{-20}$.

The reliability of quantum resources can be compromised in practice due to the complexity of their generation processes and/or the potential manipulations by untrusted parties during transmission. When performing an information task with an unreliable quantum resource, it is incorrect to treat the random variables associated with repeated experimental trials as independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). To certify the performance of such a task, one can make a random decision in each trial, either to spot-check some property of the quantum resource or to utilize the resource for the task. The task considered can be quantum key distribution, quantum randomness expansion, verifiable quantum computation, or resource allocation in quantum networks. Unfortunately, existing methods for certifying quantum performance through spot-checking are not suitable for non-i.i.d. repeated trials without additional assumptions. Here we present a novel method to address this challenge. The method works efficiently with a finite number of non-i.i.d. trials. Furthermore, our method can be adapted to estimate quantum properties in situations where the quantum resource is spot-checked and destroyed by a measurement during each non-i.i.d. repeated trial.

Quantum random numbers distinguish themselves from others by their intrinsic unpredictability arising from the principles of quantum mechanics. As such they are extremely useful in many scientific and real-world applications with considerable efforts going into their realizations. Most demonstrations focus on high asymptotic generation rates. For this goal, a large number of repeated trials are required to accumulate a significant store of certifiable randomness, resulting in a high latency between the initial request and the delivery of the requested random bits. Here we demonstrate low-latency real-time certifiable quantum randomness generation from measurements on photonic time-bin states. For this, we develop methods to efficiently certify randomness taking into account adversarial imperfections in both the state preparation and the measurement apparatus. Every 0.12 seconds we generate a block of 8192 random bits which are certified against all quantum adversaries with an error bounded by 2^{-64}. Our quantum random number generator is thus well suited for realizing a continuously operating, high-security, and high-speed quantum randomness beacon.

In this work, we present an open-source software platform that calculates key rate for general QKD protocols, building upon the numerical framework proposed by our group that can perform automated security proof of QKD protocols. The software platform is fully modularized with mutually independent modules for descriptions of protocols/channels, solvers for bounding key rate, and parameter optimization algorithms. It currently supports BB84 and measurement-device-independent QKD (including decoy states), as well as discrete-modulated continuous variable QKD. It also supports finite-size analysis for non-decoy-state protocols. We hope that the open-sourcing can attract theorists to test new protocols and/or contribute to new solvers, as well as appeal to experimentalists who wish to analyze their data or optimize parameters for new experiments.

A numerical approach for the calculation of QKD key rates allows a uniform framework to be applied to general QKD protocols. Based on our group's previous work, we would like to build a universal software platform that is fully modularized and user-friendly, where one can easily swap in and out different QKD protocol descriptions, channel simulation models or experimental data, backend numerical solvers, and parameter optimization algorithms. Our goal is to build an open-source platform that can be both useful for theorists testing new protocols as well as experimentalists looking for optimal parameters or analyzing their experimental data.