Quantum Random Number Generation with Uncharacterized Laser and Sunlight

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a source-independent quantum random number generator using uncharacterized laser and sunlight, achieving high-speed randomness extraction with practical sources, thus broadening the applicability of quantum randomness generation.

Contribution

It introduces a modified source-independent protocol and experimentally realizes it with uncharacterized light sources, enabling secure high-speed quantum randomness generation.

Findings

Randomness generation speed reaches 1 Mbps

Secure randomness extraction independent of source

Practical implementation with sunlight and uncharacterized laser

Abstract

The entropy or randomness source is an essential ingredient in random number generation. Quantum random number generators generally require well modeled and calibrated light sources, such as a laser, to generate randomness. With uncharacterized light sources, such as sunlight or an uncharacterized laser, genuine randomness is practically hard to be quantified or extracted owing to its unknown or complicated structure. By exploiting a recently proposed source-independent randomness generation protocol, we theoretically modify it by considering practical issues and experimentally realize the modified scheme with an uncharacterized laser and a sunlight source. The extracted randomness is guaranteed to be secure independent of its source and the randomness generation speed reaches 1 Mbps, three orders of magnitude higher than the original realization. Our result signifies the power of quantum technology in randomness generation and paves the way to high-speed semi-self-testing quantum random number generators with practical light sources.