Around 40 years have passed since the first pioneering works introduced the possibility of using quantum physics to enhance communications safety. Nowadays, quantum key distribution (QKD) exited the physics laboratories to become a mature technology, triggering the attention of States, military forces, banks, and private corporations. This work takes on the challenge of bringing QKD closer to a consumer technology: deployed optical fibers by telecommunication companies of different States have been used to realize a quantum network, the first-ever connecting three different countries. This work also emphasizes the necessity of networks where QKD can come up besides classical communications, whose coexistence currently represents the main limitation of this technology. This network connects Trieste to Rijeka and Ljubljana via a trusted node in Postojna. A key rate of over 3 kbps in the shortest link and a 7-hour-long measurement demonstrate the system's stability and reliability. The network has been used to present the QKD at the G20 Digital Ministers' Meeting in Trieste. The experimental results, together with the interest that one of the most important events of international politics has attracted, showcase the maturity of the QKD technology bundle, placing it in the spotlight for consumer applications in the near term.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables unconditionally secure communication guaranteed by the laws of physics. The last decades have seen tremendous efforts in making this technology feasible under real-life conditions, with implementations bridging ever longer distances and creating ever higher secure key rates. Readily deployed glass fiber connections are a natural choice for distributing the single photons necessary for QKD both in intra- and intercity links. Any fiber-based implementation however experiences chromatic dispersion which deteriorates temporal detection precision. This ultimately limits maximum distance and achievable key rate of such QKD systems. In this work, we address this limitation to both maximum distance and key rate and present an effective and easy-to-implement method to overcome chromatic dispersion effects. By exploiting entangled photons’ frequency correlations, we make use of nonlocal dispersion compensation to improve the photons’ temporal correlations. Our experiment is the first implementation utilizing the inherently quantum-mechanical effect of nonlocal dispersion compensation for QKD in this way. We experimentally show an increase in key rate from 6.1 to 228.3 bits/s over 6.46 km of telecom fiber. Our approach is extendable to arbitrary fiber lengths and dispersion values, resulting in substantially increased key rates and even enabling QKD in the first place where strong dispersion would otherwise frustrate key extraction at all.
Detection-time uncertainty due to chromatic dispersion in optical fibers decreases key rates of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Using nonlocal dispersion compensation, we demonstrate a 37-fold key rate increase of an entanglement-based QKD system.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) is the first commercial application of the second quantum revolution. Although QKD systems have already been developed and implemented all around the world, some open challenges are limiting the overall deployment of this technology (limited key rate, limited link distance, etc.). By improving the current QKD protocols, it is possible to increase the final secret key generation rate. In this work, we compare 1-decoy with 2-decoy methods in BB84 protocol over an underwater optical fiber link connecting Malta to Italy, showing that 2-decoy can achieve more than twice the key rate of 1-decoy method.
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