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Provably secure and practical quantum key distribution over 307 km of optical fibre

Nature Photonics volume 9, pages 163–168 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Proposed in 1984, quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two users to exchange provably secure keys via a potentially insecure quantum channel1. Since then, QKD has attracted much attention and significant progress has been made both in theory and practice2,3. On the application front, however, the operating distance of practical fibre-based QKD systems is limited to about 150 km (ref. 4), mainly due to the high background noise of practical single-photon detectors5,6 and inefficient finite-key security analysis7,8,9. Here, we present, for the first time, a compact and autonomous QKD system that is capable of distributing provably secure cryptographic keys over 307 km of optical fibre. This is achieved by using semiconductor single-photon detectors with record low background noise10 and a novel finite-key security analysis, which is efficient even for short key lengths. This demonstrates the feasibility of practical long-distance QKD based on standard fibre-optic telecom components.

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Figure 1: Experimental set-up of the COW QKD system.
Figure 2: Numerical simulation and experimental results.
Figure 3: System stability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank N. Walenta for scientific discussions, O. Guinnard and M. Soucarros for technical support and ID Quantique for providing the information reconcilliation software. This work was supported by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research ‘Quantum Science and Technology’ (NCCR QSIT) project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva 4, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Boris Korzh, Charles Ci Wen Lim, Raphael Houlmann, Nicolas Gisin, Bruno Sanguinetti, Rob Thew & Hugo Zbinden

  2. Sullivan Park, Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York 14831, USA

    Ming Jun Li & Daniel Nolan

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  1. Boris Korzh
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  3. Raphael Houlmann
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  4. Nicolas Gisin
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  9. Hugo Zbinden
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Contributions

B.K., R.H., R.T. and H.Z. conceived and designed the experiments. B.K. and R.H. performed the experiments. B.K., C.C.W.L. and H.Z. analysed the data. B.K., C.C.W.L., R.H., N.G., M.J.L., B.S. and D.N. contributed materials/analysis tools. B.K., C.C.W.L., M.J.L., D.N., R.T. and H.Z. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Boris Korzh or Charles Ci Wen Lim.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Korzh, B., Lim, C., Houlmann, R. et al. Provably secure and practical quantum key distribution over 307 km of optical fibre. Nature Photon 9, 163–168 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.327

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