Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) provide a compact and stable platform for quantum photonics. Here we demonstrate a silicon photonics quantum key distribution (QKD) transmitter in the first high-speed polarization-based QKD field tests. The systems reach composable secret key rates of 950 kbps in a local test (on a 103.6-m fiber with a total emulated loss of 9.2 dB) and 106 kbps in an intercity metropolitan test (on a 43-km fiber with 16.4 dB loss). Our results represent the highest secret key generation rate for polarization-based QKD experiments at a standard telecom wavelength and demonstrate PICs as a promising, scalable resource for future formation of metropolitan quantum-secure communications networks.
@article{arxiv.1708.00434,
title = {Metropolitan quantum key distribution with silicon photonics},
author = {Darius Bunandar and Anthony Lentine and Catherine Lee and Hong Cai and Christopher M. Long and Nicholas Boynton and Nicholas Martinez and Christopher DeRose and Changchen Chen and Matthew Grein and Douglas Trotter and Andrew Starbuck and Andrew Pomerene and Scott Hamilton and Franco N. C. Wong and Ryan Camacho and Paul Davids and Junji Urayama and Dirk Englund},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.00434},
year = {2018}
}