Long-distance distribution of time-bin entanglement generated in a cooled fiber

This paper reports the first demonstration of the generation and distribution of entangled photon pairs in the 1.5-um band using spontaneous four-wave mixing in a cooled fiber. Noise photons induced by spontaneous Raman scattering were suppressed by cooling a dispersion shifted fiber with liquid nitrogen, which resulted in a significant improvement in the visibility of two-photon interference. By using this scheme, time-bin entangled qubits were successfully distributed over 60 km of optical fiber with a visibility of 76%, which was obtained without removing accidental coincidences.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

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 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.

Erasing Distinguishability Using Quantum Frequency Up-Conversion

The frequency distinguishability of two single photons was successfully erased using single photon frequency up-conversion. A frequency non-degenerate photon pair generated via spontaneous four-wave mixing in a dispersion shifted fiber was used to emulate two telecom-band single photons that were in the same temporal mode but in different frequency modes. The frequencies of these photons were converted to the same frequency by using the sum frequency generation process in periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides, while maintaining their temporal indistinguishability. As a result, the two converted photons exhibited a non-classical dip in a Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference experiment. The present scheme will add flexibility to networking quantum information systems that use photons with various wavelengths.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Effects of multiple pairs on visibility measurements of entangled photons generated by spontaneous parametric processes

Entangled photon-pair sources based on spontaneous parametric processes are widely used in photonic quantum information experiments. In this paper, we clarify the relationship between average photon-pair number and the visibility of two-photon interference (TPI) using those entanglement sources. We consider sources that generate distinguishable and indistinguishable entangled photon pairs, assuming coincidence measurements that use threshold detectors. We present formulas for the TPI visibility of a polarization entanglement that take account of all the high-order multi-pair emission events. Moreover, we show that the formulas can be approximated with simple functions of the average pair number when the photon collection efficiency is small. As a result, we reveal that an indistinguishable entangled pair provides better visibility than a distinguishable one

Security of differential phase shift quantum key distribution against individual attacks

We derive a proof of security for the Differential Phase Shift Quantum Key Distribution (DPSQKD) protocol under the assumption that Eve is restricted to individual attacks. The security proof is derived by bounding the average collision probability, which leads directly to a bound on Eve's mutual information on the final key. The security proof applies to realistic sources based on pulsed coherent light. We then compare individual attacks to sequential attacks and show that individual attacks are more powerful