Publications Details

Metropolitan Quantum Key Distribution with Silicon Photonics

Urayama, Junji U.; Bunandar, Darius; Lentine, Anthony L.; Lee, Catherine; Cai, Hong; Long, Christopher M.; Boynton, Nicholas; Martinez, Nicolas J.D.; DeRose, Christopher T.; Chen, Changchen; Grein, Matthew; Hamilton, Scott; Wong, Franco N.C.; Camacho, Ryan C.; Davids, Paul D.; Englund, Dirk

Photonic integrated circuits provide a compact and stable platform for quantum photonics. Here we demonstrate a silicon photonics quantum key distribution (QKD) encoder in the first high-speed polarization-based QKD field tests. The systems reach composable secret key rates of 1.039 Mbps in a local test (on a 103.6-m fiber with a total emulated loss of 9.2 dB) and 157 kbps in an intercity metropolitan test (on a 43-km fiber with 16.4 dB loss). Our results represent the highest secret key generation rate for polarization-based QKD experiments at a standard telecom wavelength and demonstrate photonic integrated circuits as a promising, scalable resource for future formation of metropolitan quantum-secure communications networks.