TY - JOUR

T1 - Unbiased All-Optical Random-Number Generator

AU - Steinle, Tobias

AU - Greiner, Johannes N.

AU - Wrachtrup, Jörg

AU - Giessen, Harald

AU - Gerhardt, Ilja

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge the support for the 3D rendering by Ingmar Jakobi for Fig. 1. T. S. thanks the Carl Zeiss Foundation. We further acknowledge the funding from the MPG, the BW Stiftung and the DFG, the SFB Project No. CO.CO.MAT/TR21, ERC (Complexplas), the BMBF, the Eisele Foundation, the project Q.COM, and SMel. T. S. and J. N. G. contributed equally to this work.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - The generation of random bits is of enormous importance in modern information science. Cryptographic security is based on random numbers which require a physical process for their generation. This is commonly performed by hardware random number generators. These exhibit often a number of problems, namely experimental bias, memory in the system, and other technical subtleties, which reduce the reliability in the entropy estimation. Further, the generated outcome has to be post-processed to "iron out" such spurious effects. Here, we present a purely optical randomness generator, based on the bi-stable output of an optical parametric oscillator. Detector noise plays no role and post-processing is reduced to a minimum. Upon entering the bi-stable regime, initially the resulting output phase depends on vacuum fluctuations. Later, the phase is rigidly locked and can be well determined versus a pulse train, which is derived from the pump laser. This delivers an ambiguity-free output, which is reliably detected and associated with a binary outcome. The resulting random bit stream resembles a perfect coin toss and passes all relevant randomness measures. The random nature of the generated binary outcome is furthermore confirmed by an analysis of resulting conditional entropies.

AB - The generation of random bits is of enormous importance in modern information science. Cryptographic security is based on random numbers which require a physical process for their generation. This is commonly performed by hardware random number generators. These exhibit often a number of problems, namely experimental bias, memory in the system, and other technical subtleties, which reduce the reliability in the entropy estimation. Further, the generated outcome has to be post-processed to "iron out" such spurious effects. Here, we present a purely optical randomness generator, based on the bi-stable output of an optical parametric oscillator. Detector noise plays no role and post-processing is reduced to a minimum. Upon entering the bi-stable regime, initially the resulting output phase depends on vacuum fluctuations. Later, the phase is rigidly locked and can be well determined versus a pulse train, which is derived from the pump laser. This delivers an ambiguity-free output, which is reliably detected and associated with a binary outcome. The resulting random bit stream resembles a perfect coin toss and passes all relevant randomness measures. The random nature of the generated binary outcome is furthermore confirmed by an analysis of resulting conditional entropies.

KW - Optical Bistability

KW - Optical Parametric Oscillators

KW - Quantum Randomness

KW - Entropy

KW - Information Security

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85036650045&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.041050

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.041050

M3 - Article

VL - 7

SP - 041050

JO - Phys. Rev. X

JF - Phys. Rev. X

IS - 4

M1 - 041050

ER -