Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) is a technique for quantum-secured communication that eliminates all detector side-channels, although is currently limited by implementation complexity and low secure key rates. Here, we introduce a simple and compact MDI-QKD system design at gigahertz clock rates with enhanced resilience to laser fluctuations - thus enabling free-running semiconductor laser sources to be employed without spectral or phase feedback. This is achieved using direct laser modulation, carefully exploiting gain-switching and injection-locking laser dynamics to encode phase-modulated time-bin bits. Our design enables secure key rates that improve upon the state of the art by an order of magnitude, up to 8 bps at 54 dB channel loss and 2 kbps in the finite-size regime for 30 dB channel loss. This greatly simplified MDI-QKD system design and proof-of-principle demonstration shows that MDI-QKD is a practical, high-performance solution for future quantum communication networks.
@article{arxiv.2105.06748,
title = {Gigahertz measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution using directly modulated lasers},
author = {R. I. Woodward and Y. S. Lo and M. Pittaluga and M. Minder and T. K. Paraïso and M. Lucamarini and Z. L. Yuan and A. J. Shields},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.06748},
year = {2021}
}