Benchmarking quantum key distribution by mixing single photons and laser light
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909878270820352 |
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| author | Portella, Yann Steindl, Petr Álvarez, Juan Rafael Hebenstreit, Tim Lemaître, Aristide Morassi, Martina Somaschi, Niccolo Lanco, Loïc Rozpędek, Filip Senellart, Pascale Fioretto, Dario A. |
| author_facet | Portella, Yann Steindl, Petr Álvarez, Juan Rafael Hebenstreit, Tim Lemaître, Aristide Morassi, Martina Somaschi, Niccolo Lanco, Loïc Rozpędek, Filip Senellart, Pascale Fioretto, Dario A. |
| contents | Quantum key distribution is a key application of quantum mechanics, shaping the future of privacy and secure communications. Many protocols require single photons, often approximated by strongly attenuated laser pulses. Here, we harness the emission of a quantum dot embedded in a micropillar and explore a hybrid approach where the information is encoded on a mixture of single photons and laser pulses. We derive a phenomenological analysis of the configuration where both sources of light are mixed incoherently to perform the BB84 protocol, showing nearly perfect matching between theory and experiment. This provides a flexible technology compensating limited collected brightnesses of single-photon sources as well as a thorough investigation of single-photon statistics advantage scenarios over Poisson-distributed statistics. Explicitly, our model highlights an efficiency threshold for unconditional advantage of single photons over laser along with insights on the interplay between single-photon purity and collected brightness in the performances of BB84. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_26337 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Benchmarking quantum key distribution by mixing single photons and laser light Portella, Yann Steindl, Petr Álvarez, Juan Rafael Hebenstreit, Tim Lemaître, Aristide Morassi, Martina Somaschi, Niccolo Lanco, Loïc Rozpędek, Filip Senellart, Pascale Fioretto, Dario A. Quantum Physics Quantum key distribution is a key application of quantum mechanics, shaping the future of privacy and secure communications. Many protocols require single photons, often approximated by strongly attenuated laser pulses. Here, we harness the emission of a quantum dot embedded in a micropillar and explore a hybrid approach where the information is encoded on a mixture of single photons and laser pulses. We derive a phenomenological analysis of the configuration where both sources of light are mixed incoherently to perform the BB84 protocol, showing nearly perfect matching between theory and experiment. This provides a flexible technology compensating limited collected brightnesses of single-photon sources as well as a thorough investigation of single-photon statistics advantage scenarios over Poisson-distributed statistics. Explicitly, our model highlights an efficiency threshold for unconditional advantage of single photons over laser along with insights on the interplay between single-photon purity and collected brightness in the performances of BB84. |
| title | Benchmarking quantum key distribution by mixing single photons and laser light |
| topic | Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26337 |