Scheme for practical server-client COW-QKD based on auto-compensated fiber interferometer

MIGUEL A. LAROTONDA; IGNACIO H. LOPEZ GRANDE

Washington, DC

Conferencia; 6th International Conference on Quantum Cryptography (QCRYPT); 2016

Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS)

We present an experimental proposal for a distributed-phase-reference (DPR) QKD scheme based on the Coherent One Way (COW) protocol, a plug & play setup and an auto-compensated fiber interferometer. The scheme is presented on a server-client fashion with all the delicate and expensive components in the server side (laser, detector and interferometer) while the client side comprises only an intensity modulator and a Faraday mirror. The arrangement is intended to generate secure cryptographic key at high rates in a simple way. We explore two alternatives for the server's experimental setup; in one case using a Faraday-Michelson interferometer (FMI) configuration and in the other employing a Polarization-Beam-Splitter based Mach-Zehnder (MZI) interferometer.