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Resolution of 100 photons and quantum generation of unbiased random numbers

Nature Photonics volume 17, pages 106–111 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Macroscopic quantum phenomena, such as observed in superfluids and superconductors, have led to promising technological advancements and some of the most important tests of fundamental physics. At present, quantum detection of light is mostly relegated to the microscale, where avalanche photodiodes are very sensitive to distinguishing single-photon events from vacuum but cannot differentiate between larger photon-number events. Beyond this, the ability to perform measurements to resolve photon numbers is highly desirable for a variety of quantum information applications, including computation, sensing and cryptography. True photon-number resolving detectors do exist, but they are currently limited to the ability to resolve on the order of 10 photons, which is too small for several quantum-state generation methods based on heralded detection. Here we extend photon measurement into the mesoscopic regime by implementing a detection scheme based on multiplexing highly quantum-efficient transition-edge sensors to accurately resolve photon numbers between 0 and 100. We then demonstrate the use of our system by implementing a quantum random-number generator with no inherent bias. This method is based on sampling a coherent state in the photon-number basis and is robust against environmental noise, phase and amplitude fluctuations in the laser, loss and detector inefficiency as well as eavesdropping. Beyond true random-number generation, our detection scheme serves as a means to implement quantum measurement and engineering techniques valuable for photonic quantum information processing.

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Fig. 1: Detection scheme.
Fig. 2: Experimental photon-number distribution obtained by splitting a coherent state of mean photon number \(\bar{n}=57\) across three TES channels over 108 events.
Fig. 3: Randomness tests for the resultant bit strings from 108 events based on assigning three bits of information to each event by taking the measured photon number modulo 8.

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Data availability

The data supporting plots within this paper are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21304524.v1 and https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21291318. Additional data used for detector calibration can be obtained from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes used to process and analyse the data can be obtained from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

M.E., A.H. and O.P. were supported by National Science Foundation grant numbers DMR-1839175 and PHY-1820882. M.E., A.H., C.C., H.D. and O.P. were additionally supported by Jefferson Lab LDRD project number LDRD21-17 under which Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates Jefferson Lab. R.J.B. acknowledges support from the National Research Council Research Associate Program. C.C.G. acknowledges support under the AFRL Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP). P.M.A. and C.C.G. acknowledge support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). M.E. thanks L. A. Morais and R. Nehra for discussion, and T. Gerrits for advice regarding the TES. O.P. thanks A. Miller, A. Lita and S. W. Nam for building the initial single-channel detector system. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or General Electric of the linked websites, or the information, products, or services contained therein. The Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial, security, or other control over the information you may find at these locations.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Miller Eaton, Amr Hossameldin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Miller Eaton, Amr Hossameldin & Olivier Pfister

  2. Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, NY, USA

    Richard J. Birrittella & Paul M. Alsing

  3. National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, USA

    Richard J. Birrittella

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Lehman College, The City University of New York, Bronx, NY, USA

    Christopher C. Gerry

  5. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News, VA, USA

    Hai Dong & Chris Cuevas

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Contributions

M.E., A.H. and O.P. designed the experimental set-up and characterized the detector. H.D. and C.C. built and programmed the EFADC for data collection. M.E. and A.H. collected and analysed measured data. R.J.B., P.M.A. and C.C.G. devised the method to make the unbiased QRNG. R.J.B. and P.M.A. performed the data analysis for characterizing randomness of the generated bit sequence. The article was written by M.E. with contributions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Miller Eaton or Amr Hossameldin.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 NIST randomness tests for phase-averaged data.

Randomness tests for bit strings obtained from modulo 2 binning the sampled photon number from a mixture of coherent states with randomized phase. All tests pass indicating phase stability has no bearing on the quality of QRNG. The error bars for each proportion are computed from the Wilson score interval of equation (26) where n = 143 is the total number of trials and \({n}_{s}\,\left({n}_{f}\right)\) are the number of successful (failed) trials for a significance level of α = 0.01. Given repeated testing of the bit generation method, the error bars denote the range for which the proportion is likely to fall. On the horizontal axis, CuSum (F) and (B) denote the cumulative sum tests for forward and backward propagation through the bit sequence, DFT denotes the discrete Fourier transform (spectral) test and Lin. Complex denotes the linear complexity test.

Extended Data Fig. 2 NIST tests of randomness.

Randomness tests for the resultant bit strings based on how the measured data is binned (Mod 8 data shown in the main text). Mod 2, Mod 4, and Mod 8 tests all indicate randomness, while some tests begin to fail for Mod 16 and Mod 32. This is expected due to the non-zero residual biases for a coherent state distribution with mean photon number \(\bar{n}=57\) and a PNRD limit of 100 photons. The error bars for each proportion are computed from the Wilson score (confidence) interval of equation (26) where \(n=\left\{143,287,575,719\right\}\) is the total number of trials for mod\(\left\{2,4,16,32\right\}\) binning, respectively, and \({n}_{s}\,\left({n}_{f}\right)\) are the number of successful (failed) trials for a significance level of α = 0.01. Given repeated testing of the bit generation method, the error bars denote the range for which the proportion is likely to fall. On the horizontal axis, CuSum (F) and (B) denote the cumulative sum tests for forward and backward propagation through the bit sequence, DFT denotes the discrete Fourier transform (spectral) test and Lin. Complex denotes the linear complexity test.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Binning error reduction.

Error-rate reduction on photon-number resolution through post-selection of data. (a) By excluding data points with measured areas further from the centre of each bin, the portion of overlap from neighbouring Gaussians can be substantially reduced. The location of the new binning thresholds must be the same fraction of the Gaussian peak width, σn, for each bin. Here, 2σn is chosen. (b) Error rate to incorrectly characterize a true 25 photon event as a function of the proportion of measurement data kept.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Gaussian overlaps for all detector channels.

Normalized Gaussian fits for the histogrammed area measurements TES channel 1 (a), 2 (b), and 3 (c). Note that for channels 1 and 3, the FPGA thresholds are set above the electronics noise such that zero photon events have a measured area of zero. For channel 2, electronics noise can drift slightly above the set voltage threshold so that small, non-zero areas are recorded for zero photon events.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Photon-number error rates for all detectors.

Error rates for all detection channels depending on binning. Error percentages indicate the probability to incorrectly count a measurement that was a true n photon event. Errorall includes all areas and uses the Gaussian intersections to place bins. Error2σ discards area events occurring outsides of a 2σ width centred around each Gaussian in the histogram fit. The thrown-out events account for 32% of all measurements. The Error1σ discards area events occurring outsides of a 1σ width centred around each Gaussian in the histogram fit. This removes 62% of the measured data but drastically reduces counting errors.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Residual bias due to energy truncation.

Residual bias based on modulo binning of a photon number distribution for coherent state of mean photon number \(\bar{n}\). Markers indicate the theoretical deviation from a uniformly random distribution if one had infinite photon-number resolving capability while solid lines give the expected bias with a truncation of the photon number distribution beyond 100 photons. The vertical dashed line indicates a coherent state with \(\bar{n}=57\) such as used in this experiment where the residual bias for mod 2, mod 4, and mod 8 binning are the same. The two plots are identical with the plot at left showing log scale.

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Eaton, M., Hossameldin, A., Birrittella, R.J. et al. Resolution of 100 photons and quantum generation of unbiased random numbers. Nat. Photon. 17, 106–111 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01105-9

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