Quantum Key Distribution has made continuous progress over the last 20 years and is now commercially available. However, the secret key rates (SKR) are still limited to a few Mbps. Here, we present a custom multipixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and fast acquisition and real-time key distillation electronics, removing two roadblocks and allowing an increase of the SKR of more than an order of magnitude. In combination with a simple 2.5 GHz clocked time-bin quantum key distribution system, we can generate secret keys at a rate of 64 Mbps over a distance of 10.0 km and at a rate of 3.0 Mbps over a distance of 102.4 km with real-time key distillation.
@article{arxiv.2210.16126,
title = {Fast Single Photon Detectors and real-time Key Distillation: Enabling High Secret Key Rate QKD Systems},
author = {Fadri Grünenfelder and Alberto Boaron and Matthieu Perrenoud and Giovanni V. Resta and Davide Rusca and Claudio Barreiro and Raphaël Houlmann and Rebecka Sax and Lorenzo Stasi and Sylvain El-Khoury and Esther Hänggi and Nico Bosshard and Félix Bussières and Hugo Zbinden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.16126},
year = {2023}
}