Generation of 1.5-um band time-bin entanglement using spontaneous fiber four-wave mixing and planar lightwave circuit interferometers

This paper reports 1.5-um band time-bin entanglement generation. We employed a spontaneous four-wave mixing process in a dispersion shifted fiber, with which correlated photon pairs with very narrow bandwidths were generated efficiently. To observe two-photon interference, we used planar lightwave circuit based interferometers that were operated stably without feedback control. As a result, we obtained coincidence fringes with 99 % visibilities after subtracting accidental coincidences, and successfully distributed entangled photons over 20-km standard single-mode fiber without any deterioration in the quantum correlation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Quantum Noise in Optical Amplifiers

Noise is one of the basic characteristics of optical amplifiers. Whereas there are various noise sources, the intrinsic one is quantum noise that originates from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This chapter describes quantum noise in optical amplifiers, including population-inversion–based amplifiers such as an Erbium-doped fiber amplifier and a semiconductor optical amplifier, and optical parametric amplifiers. A full quantum mechanical treatment is developed based on Heisenberg equation of motion for quantum mechanical operators. The results provide the quantum mechanical basis for a classical picture of amplifier noise widely used in the optical communication field

Quantum secret sharing based on modulated high-dimensional time-bin entanglement

We propose a new scheme for quantum secret sharing (QSS) that uses a modulated high-dimensional time-bin entanglement. By modulating the relative phase randomly by {0,pi}, a sender with the entanglement source can randomly change the sign of the correlation of the measurement outcomes obtained by two distant recipients. The two recipients must cooperate if they are to obtain the sign of the correlation, which is used as a secret key. We show that our scheme is secure against intercept-and-resend (I-R) and beam splitting attacks by an outside eavesdropper thanks to the non-orthogonality of high-dimensional time-bin entangled states. We also show that a cheating attempt based on an I-R attack by one of the recipients can be detected by changing the dimension of the time bin entanglement randomly and inserting two "vacant" slots between the packets. Then, cheating attempts can be detected by monitoring the count rate in the vacant slots. The proposed scheme has better experimental feasibility than previously proposed entanglement-based QSS schemes.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

Multiuser Differential-Phase-Shift Quantum Key Distribution System on a Ring Network

Inoue K., Honjo T.. Multiuser Differential-Phase-Shift Quantum Key Distribution System on a Ring Network. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 36, 989 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2024.3424432.Quantum key distribution (QKD) has been studied, which is basically a point-to-point system. Therefore, when constructing a QKD network in which any pair of multiple users shares a secret key, full-mesh connections equipping each user with a transmitter and a receiver must be installed. This study presents a QKD system based on the differential-phase-shift QKD protocol, which accommodates multiusers on one transmission line. The proposed system uses a ring network connecting multiple nodes, in which one node is equipped with a transmitter and a receiver and the other nodes are with phase-modulation circuits. The system performance is evaluated and the results indicate that a 100-km ring network can support up to seven nodes

Quantum conference key agreement based on differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution

The version of record of this article, first published in Quantum Information Processing, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-024-04453-3.A quantum conference key agreement (QCKA) protocol based on differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution is presented, which provides a common secret key for secure communication between more than two parties. In the proposed protocol, one party simultaneously broadcasts a weak coherent pulse train with {0, π} phases to multiple parties that measure the phase differences between adjacent pulses using a delay interferometer followed by photon detectors, and the transmitter and receivers share secret key bits from the coincident counts in the receivers. The system setup and operation are simpler than those of conventional QCKA schemes that use a multipartite quantum entanglement state. The key creation performance is evaluated by considering the eavesdropping probability. The results indicate that the proposed scheme offers better performance than the conventional entanglement-based QCKA system

Entanglement formation and violation of Bell's inequality with a semiconductor single photon source

We report the generation of polarization-entangled photons, using a quantum dot single photon source, linear optics and photodetectors. Two photons created independently are observed to violate Bell's inequality. The density matrix describing the polarization state of the postselected photon pairs is also reconstructed, and agrees well with a simple model predicting the quality of entanglement from the known parameters of the single photon source. Our scheme provides a method to generate no more than one entangled photon pair per cycle, a feature useful to enhance quantum cryptography protocols using entangled photons.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Phase I Clinical Study of the Dietary Supplement, Agaricus blazei Murill, in Cancer Patients in Remission

Although many cancer patients use complementary and alternative medicine, including Agaricus blazei Murill (ABM), safety is not yet well understood. Cancer survivors took 1.8, 3.6, or 5.4 g ABM granulated powder (Kyowa Wellness Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) per day orally for 6 months. Adverse events were defined by subjective/objective symptoms and laboratory data according to the National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 3.0 (NCI-CTCAE v3.0). Seventy-eight patients were assessed for safety of ABM (30/24/24 subjects at 1/2/3 packs per day, resp.). Adverse events were observed in 9 patients (12%). Most were digestive in nature such as nausea and diarrhea, and one patient developed a liver dysfunction-related food allergy, drug lymphocyte product. However, none of these adverse events occurred in a dose-dependent manner. This study shows that ABM does not cause problems in most patients within laboratory parameters at the dosages tested over 6 months. This trial supports previous evidence that the ABM product is generally safe, excluding possible allergic reaction