We demonstrate a method to reduce the number of single-photon detectors (SPDs) required in multi-party quantum key distribution (QKD) networks by a factor of two by using detector time multiplexing (DTM). We implement the DTM scheme for an entanglement-based time-bin protocol and compare QKD results with and without DTM in our QKD network with four users. When small efficiency losses are acceptable, DTM enables cost-effective, scalable implementations of multi-user QKD networks.
@article{arxiv.2305.14487,
title = {Reducing the number of single-photon detectors in quantum key distribution networks by time multiplexing},
author = {Jakob Kaltwasser and Joschka Seip and Erik Fitzke and Maximilian Tippmann and Thomas Walther},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14487},
year = {2023}
}