Daytime and Nighttime QKD over an atmospheric free space channel with passive polarisation bases compensation

TL;DR

This study demonstrates reliable quantum key distribution over a 50-meter free-space link during day and night by employing passive polarization compensation and filtering techniques to mitigate environmental effects and maintain security.

Contribution

Introduces a passive polarization correction scheme for free-space QKD, effectively mitigating birefringence and environmental effects, enabling secure communication under varying lighting conditions.

Findings

Achieved average QBER of <11% in experiments.

Maintained high key rates during day and night conditions.

Demonstrated secure QKD over atmospheric free-space channel.

Abstract

Quantum Communication (QC) represents a promising futuristic technology, revolutionizing secure communication. Photon-based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is the most widely explored area in QC research, utilizing the polarisation degree of freedom of photons for both fibre and free-space communication. In this work, we investigate and mitigate the challenges posed by fibre birefringence and atmospheric effects on QKD, using a $50$-meter free-space optical link and entanglement-based BBM92 QKD protocol. We implement a passive polarisation correction scheme to address the critical issue of polarisation scrambling induced by fibre birefringence and the difference in the frame of reference between Alice and Bob. This scheme effectively mitigates these adverse effects, ensuring reliable polarisation control over the quantum channel. Furthermore, we conduct QKD experiments in both day and night conditions, encountering challenges such as high background noise levels and dynamic environmental changes. To overcome these issues, we employ various filtering techniques to enhance signal quality and security. Our results demonstrate the successful implementation of QKD over a free-space optical link by producing information-theoretic secure QBER of $<11\%$ on an average and high keyrate, even under varying lighting and weather conditions. Over one 24 hour cycle of data acquisition, we measured an average daylight keyrate and QBER of ($3.9118\pm0.7339 KHz$ and $10.5518\pm1.3428\%$) respectively and night time keyrate and QBER of ($4.6118\pm0.8088 KHz$ and $10.3545\pm1.2501\%$) respectively.