Secure quantum communication in the presence of phase- and polarization-dependent loss

Abstract

© 2018 American Physical Society. Silicon photonics holds the promise of the miniaturization of quantum communication devices. Recently, silicon chip optical transmitters for quantum key distribution (QKD) have been built and demonstrated experimentally. Nonetheless, these silicon chips suffer substantial phase- and polarization-dependent loss (PDL) which, if unchecked, could compromise the security of QKD systems due to overestimation of the secret key rate. Here, first, we restore the security by regarding single photons without phase and polarization dependence as untagged and secure qubits. Next, by using a postselection technique, we implement a secure QKD protocol that provides a high key generation rate even in the presence of severe phase- and polarization-dependent loss. Our solution is simple to realize in a practical experiment, as it does not require any hardware modification.