Single photon sources for fiber optical quantum key distribution

安全性在日常通信系统中起着至关重要的作用，数十亿用户通过他们的设备访问互联网。网上银行、电子商务、电子健康和网上购物都是无条件安全对客户至关重要的少数例子。然而，当前通信系统的安全依赖于可能被窃听者和黑客破坏的数学和计算能力。目前的安全协议也容易受到量子计算等破坏性技术的影响，因此需要真实的替代方法。 量子密钥分发（QKD）提供了一个最终的解决方案，其无条件的安全性是基于量子物理定律，而不是数学的力量。有一种快速发展的技术，可以利用现有光纤骨干中的光、光子的量子态来提供物理层的安全性。很少有成功的公司提供光纤QKD解决方案，但他们仍然在有效地产生，检测和传输光子以充分利用光的量子特性方面存在缺陷。单光子源和探测器在所有的量子密钥分配系统和方案中起着核心作用，它们是实际量子密钥分配系统中最脆弱的部件。 在这项提案中，滑铁卢大学的Majedi团队与RANOVUS合作，从性能、成本和商业化潜力方面确定QKD系统的各种单光子源。Majedi的团队在单光子探测器和光源方面拥有众所周知的专业知识，在滑铁卢拥有完善的实验基础设施，完全有能力进行这样的研究任务。RANOVUS是一家领先的加拿大公司，提供量子点多波长激光器，结合先进的数字和光子集成电路技术，用于安全和高速通信网络。

Security plays a crucial role in everyday's communication systems with billions of users accessing the Internet from their devices. Online banking, e-commerce, e-health and online shopping are few examples in which unconditional security is of central importance to customers.The security of current communication systems, however, relies on mathematical and computational power that can be compromised by eavesdroppers and hackers. Current security protocols are also vulnerable to disruptive technologies such as quantum computing so there is a real need for an alternative approaches. Quantum Key Distributions (QKD) offers an ultimate solution that its unconditional security is based on the laws of quantum physics rather than mathematical power. There is a rapidly-growing technology to exploit quantum states of light, photons, in an existing optical fiber backbone to provide the security at the physical layers. Few successful companies provide optical fiber QKD solutions, however they are still suffering from imperfections in generation, detection and transmission of photons efficiently to take full advantage of quantum properties of light. Single photon sources and detectors are playing central role in all of the QKD systems and schemes and they are the most vulnerable components in the practical QKD systems. In this proposal, Majedi's group at the University of Waterloo teams up with RANOVUS to identify various single photon sources for QKD systems in terms of their performances, cost, and commercialization potentials. Majedi's group has a well-known expertise in single photon detectors and sources with a well-established experimental infrastructure at Waterloo fully capable of conducting such a research task. RANOVUS is a leading Canadian company with a portfolio in offering quantum dot multi-wavelength laser combined with advanced digital and photonics integrated circuit technologies for secure and high-speed communication networks.