Superconducting Nanostrip Photon-Number-Resolving Detector as an Unbiased Random Number Generator

• Published in: IEEE transactions on quantum engineering Vol. 5; pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Ercolano, Pasquale, Ejrnaes, Mikkel, Bruscino, Ciro, Bukhari, Syed Muhammad Junaid, Salvoni, Daniela, Zhang, Chengjun, Huang, Jia, Li, Hao, You, Lixing, Parlato, Loredana, Pepe, Giovanni Piero
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Detectors; Geometry; Optical switches; Photon-number-resolving detector (PNRD); Photonics; Photons; Poisson distribution; Quantum optics; random number generator; Random numbers; Recovery time; Sensors; single-photon detector; Strips; superconducting photodetector; Superconducting photodetectors; Superconductivity; Temperature measurement
• ISSN: 2689-1808; 2689-1808
• DOI: 10.1109/TQE.2024.3432070

Detectors capable of resolving the number of photons are essential in many applications, ranging from classic photonics to quantum optics and quantum communication. In particular, photon-number-resolving detectors based on arrays of superconducting nanostrips can offer a high detection efficiency, a low dark count rate, and a recovery time of a few nanoseconds. In this work, we use a detector of this kind for the unbiased generation of random numbers by following two different methods based on the detection of photons. In the former, we exploit the property that the light is equally distributed on each strip of the entire detector, whereas in the latter, we exploit the fact that, for a high average number of photons, the parity of the Poisson distribution of the number of photons emitted by the laser tends to be zero. In addition, since these two methods are independent, it is possible to use them at the same time.