Quantum cryptography or quantum key distribution (QKD) applies fundamental laws of quantum physics to guarantee secure communication. The security of quantum cryptography was proven in the last decade. Many security analyses are based on the assumption that QKD system components are idealized. In practice, inevitable device imperfections may compromise security unless these imperfections are well investigated. A highly attenuated laser pulse which gives a weak coherent state is widely used in QKD experiments. A weak coherent state has multi-photon components, which opens up a security loophole to the sophisticated eavesdropper. With a small adjustment of the hardware, we will prove that the decoy state method can close this loophole and substantially improve the QKD performance. We also propose a few practical decoy state protocols, study statistical fluctuations and perform experimental demonstrations. Moreover, we will apply the methods from entanglement distillation protocols based on two-way classical communication to improve the decoy state QKD performance. Furthermore, we study the decoy state methods for other single photon sources, such as triggering parametric down-conversion (PDC) source. Note that our work, decoy state protocol, has attracted a lot of scientific and media interest. The decoy state QKD becomes a standard technique for prepare-and-measure QKD schemes. Aside from single-photon-based QKD schemes, there is another type of scheme based on entangled photon sources. A PDC source is commonly used as an entangled photon source. We propose a model and post-processing scheme for the entanglement-based QKD with a PDC source. Although the model is proposed to study the entanglement-based QKD, we emphasize that our generic model may also be useful for other non-QKD experiments involving a PDC source. By simulating a real PDC experiment, we show that the entanglement-based QKD can achieve longer maximal secure distance than the single-photon-based QKD schemes. We propose a time-shift attack that exploits the efficiency mismatch of two single photon detectors in a QKD system. This eavesdropping strategy can be realized by current technology. We will also discuss counter measures against the attack and study the security of a QKD system with efficiency mismatch detectors.

Quantum cryptography or quantum key distribution (QKD) applies fundamental laws of quantum physics to guarantee secure communication. The security of quantum cryptography was proven in the last decade. Many security analyses are based on the assumption that QKD system components are idealized. In practice, inevitable device imperfections may compromise security unless these imperfections are well investigated. A highly attenuated laser pulse which gives a weak coherent state is widely used in QKD experiments. A weak coherent state has multi-photon components, which opens up a security loophole to the sophisticated eavesdropper. With a small adjustment of the hardware, we will prove that the decoy state method can close this loophole and substantially improve the QKD performance. We also propose a few practical decoy state protocols, study statistical fluctuations and perform experimental demonstrations. Moreover, we will apply the methods from entanglement distillation protocols based on two-way classical communication to improve the decoy state QKD performance. Furthermore, we study the decoy state methods for other single photon sources, such as triggering parametric down-conversion (PDC) source. Note that our work, decoy state protocol, has attracted a lot of scientific and media interest. The decoy state QKD becomes a standard technique for prepare-and-measure QKD schemes. Aside from single-photon-based QKD schemes, there is another type of scheme based on entangled photon sources. A PDC source is commonly used as an entangled photon source. We propose a model and post-processing scheme for the entanglement-based QKD with a PDC source. Although the model is proposed to study the entanglement-based QKD, we emphasize that our generic model may also be useful for other non-QKD experiments involving a PDC source. By simulating a real PDC experiment, we show that the entanglement-based QKD can achieve longer maximal secure distance than the single-photon-based QKD schemes. We propose a time-shift attack that exploits the efficiency mismatch of two single photon detectors in a QKD system. This eavesdropping strategy can be realized by current technology. We will also discuss counter measures against the attack and study the security of a QKD system with efficiency mismatch detectors.

Quantum key distribution (QKD), a novel cryptographic technique for secure distribution of secret keys between two parties, is the first successful quantum technology to emerge from quantum information science. The security of QKD is guaranteed by fundamental properties of quantum mechanical systems, unlike public-key cryptography whose security depends on difficult to solve mathematical problems such as factoring. Current terrestrial quantum links are limited to about 250 km. However, QKD could soon be deployed on a global scale over free-space links to an orbiting satellite used as a trusted node. Envisioning a photonic uplink to a quantum receiver positioned on a low Earth orbit satellite, the Canadian Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) is a collaborative project involving Canadian universities, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and industry partners. This thesis presents some of the research conducted towards feasibility studies of the QEYSSat mission. One of the main goals of this research is to develop technologies for data acquisition and processing required for a satellite-based QKD system. A working testbed system helps to establish firmly grounded estimates of the overall complexity, the computing resources necessary, and the bandwidth requirements of the classical communication channel. It can also serve as a good foundation for the design and development of a future payload computer onboard QEYSSat. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a QKD post-processing system which aims to minimize the computing requirements at one side of the link, unlike most traditional implementations which assume symmetric computing resources at each end. The post-processing software features precise coincidence analysis, error correction based on low-density parity-check codes, privacy amplification employing Toeplitz hash functions, and a procedure for automated polarization alignment. The system's hardware and software components integrate fully with a quantum optical apparatus used to demonstrate the feasibility of QKD with a satellite uplink. Detailed computing resource requirements and QKD results from the operation of the entire system at high-loss regimes are presented here.

Quantum key distribution (QKD), a novel cryptographic technique for secure distribution of secret keys between two parties, is the first successful quantum technology to emerge from quantum information science. The security of QKD is guaranteed by fundamental properties of quantum mechanical systems, unlike public-key cryptography whose security depends on difficult to solve mathematical problems such as factoring. Current terrestrial quantum links are limited to about 250 km. However, QKD could soon be deployed on a global scale over free-space links to an orbiting satellite used as a trusted node. Envisioning a photonic uplink to a quantum receiver positioned on a low Earth orbit satellite, the Canadian Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) is a collaborative project involving Canadian universities, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and industry partners. This thesis presents some of the research conducted towards feasibility studies of the QEYSSat mission. One of the main goals of this research is to develop technologies for data acquisition and processing required for a satellite-based QKD system. A working testbed system helps to establish firmly grounded estimates of the overall complexity, the computing resources necessary, and the bandwidth requirements of the classical communication channel. It can also serve as a good foundation for the design and development of a future payload computer onboard QEYSSat. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a QKD post-processing system which aims to minimize the computing requirements at one side of the link, unlike most traditional implementations which assume symmetric computing resources at each end. The post-processing software features precise coincidence analysis, error correction based on low-density parity-check codes, privacy amplification employing Toeplitz hash functions, and a procedure for automated polarization alignment. The system's hardware and software components integrate fully with a quantum optical apparatus used to demonstrate the feasibility of QKD with a satellite uplink. Detailed computing resource requirements and QKD results from the operation of the entire system at high-loss regimes are presented here.

[pt] A criptografia quântica se apresenta como uma área relativamente nova e interdisciplinar que, fundamentada nas leis da mecânica quântica, promete solucionar o grande desafio da criptografia simétrica clássica atual, a distribuição de chaves. A distribuição quântica de chaves provê comunicação absolutamente segura entre duas partes, possibilitando o compartilhamento de um segredo, que será utilizado na posterior encriptação da mensagem. Esta dissertação relata a implementação física experimental de um sistema óptico de distribuição quântica de chaves com codificação em freqüência por dupla-modulação em amplitude e fase e sincronização por multiplexação no domínio do comprimento de onda. São introduzidos os conceitos teóricos básicos necessários ao desenvolvimento do tema e apresentadas medições de caracterização dos principais componentes do sistema, bem como resultados de medidas sistêmicas clássicas e quânticas. / [en] The quantum cryptography rises as a relatively new and interdisciplinary area that, grounded in the quantum mechanics laws, promises to solve the major challenge in the actual symmetric classical cryptography, the key distribution. The quantum key distribution enables absolutely secure communication between two parts, making them able to share a secret that will be used in the posterior message encryptation. This dissertation reports the experimental physical implementation of an optical quantum key distribution system with frequency coding by amplitude and phase double-modulation process and wavelengthdivision multiplexing synchronization. The mean theoretical foundations are briefly introduced and the characterization measurements of the most important devices are shown, as like results from systemic classical and quantum measurements.

La distribution de clé quantique (QKD - Quantum Key Distribution) est une technologie permettant d'assurer au niveau théorique l'inviolabilité des clés transmises. Cependant, certains problèmes d'ordre pratique de mise en œuvre restent ouverts, en particulier, concernant l'augmentation de la portée d'application de QKD. L'objectif de la thèse est de répondre aux deux questions colérées suivantes : (1) comment de construire des réseaux QKD de grande taille; (2) comment sécuriser les relais des clés QKD. Nous avons proposé, dans un premier temps, un modèle permettant de garantir la sécurité de la transmission de clés dans un réseau QKD de grande taille en utilisant un routage stochastique. L'efficacité de ce procédé est démontrée à l'aide de la théorie de la percolation. Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons exploré la sécurité des modèles de relais des clés QKD et arrivons à proposer quatres nouveaux modèles capables à étendre la portée de QKD.

This thesis describes the deployment of a free-space quantum key distribution system across the University of Waterloo campus. The quantum key distribution system has the ability to provide unconditionally secure communication between two parties: Alice and Bob. The system exploits the quantum mechanical property of entanglement in order to generate a key. Security is then guaranteed by the No-Cloning theorem and the laws of quantum mechanics which prevent a quantum system from being measured without disturbing it. Polarization-entangled photon pairs are created using the non-linear optical process of type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. A free-space link of approximately $\mathrm{580~m}$ is used to distribute one-half of the pairs to Alice at a distant location, while the other half of the pairs are locally detected by Bob. The details of the detection apparatus necessary to measure the polarization of the photons and the software used to process the measurement data according to the BBM92 protocol are described. An experimental violation of the CHSH inequality (a derivative of the original Bell inequality) is demonstrated to show that polarization-entangled photon pairs are in fact being distributed to the two parties. Finally, the full BBM92 protocol is performed using the entangled photon pairs to generate a secure key and transmit an encrypted message between Alice and Bob. Currently, the system can only be operated at night because background light saturates the detectors during the day; however, future work will focus on making daylight operation feasible.

This thesis describes the deployment of a free-space quantum key distribution system across the University of Waterloo campus. The quantum key distribution system has the ability to provide unconditionally secure communication between two parties: Alice and Bob. The system exploits the quantum mechanical property of entanglement in order to generate a key. Security is then guaranteed by the No-Cloning theorem and the laws of quantum mechanics which prevent a quantum system from being measured without disturbing it. Polarization-entangled photon pairs are created using the non-linear optical process of type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. A free-space link of approximately $\mathrm{580~m}$ is used to distribute one-half of the pairs to Alice at a distant location, while the other half of the pairs are locally detected by Bob. The details of the detection apparatus necessary to measure the polarization of the photons and the software used to process the measurement data according to the BBM92 protocol are described. An experimental violation of the CHSH inequality (a derivative of the original Bell inequality) is demonstrated to show that polarization-entangled photon pairs are in fact being distributed to the two parties. Finally, the full BBM92 protocol is performed using the entangled photon pairs to generate a secure key and transmit an encrypted message between Alice and Bob. Currently, the system can only be operated at night because background light saturates the detectors during the day; however, future work will focus on making daylight operation feasible.

The use of Liquid Crystal (LC) materials, mainly in display applications, has contributed to major advancement in liquid crystal science and technology. New and more complex phases of liquid crystals were developed to compete with conventional nematic LC displays. The challenge now is to manufacture high birefringence liquid crystal materials with low viscosity. LC is also used in many other applications, such as temperature sensors and photonics beam shaping in the form of spatial light modulators (SLM) and q-plates. The first objective of this thesis is to investigate the magic mirror effect using a SLM following Sir Michael Berry’s theory. Here, we demonstrated a simple way of producing the magic mirror effect using LC devices and aimed to use a micron-sized device to shape the phase and polarization of light with gentle phase variation. We were able to generate the magic mirror image intensity pattern, both experimentally and theoretically. This was done by computing and generating the desired phase pattern of an image on the SLM, then aligning light propagation through this phase pattern. The experimental and theoretical results showed good agreement when comparing the produced intensity patterns. In the second part of this thesis, we experimentally investigated the use of structured photons, created using q-plates, which is a birefringent liquid crystal cell of OAM and SAM coupling, in quantum key distribution (QKD) using the BB84 protocol through orbital angular momentum (OAM) maintaining optical fibres. Here, we were successful in generating a secure key between two parties with a quantum bit error rate of 8.6% which is below the security threshold of 11%. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using structured light in QKD through fibres to boost key rates and security.

Finite structure splitting (FSS) is a bottleneck for quantum dot (QD) based solid state entangled photon pair generator (EPPG) for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) application. In QD, entangle photon pairs are generated through a cascaded emission process—biexciton to exciton to ground state. The FSS of the excitonic state destroys the entanglement of the photon pairs, hence needs to be eliminated. FSS can be tuned by engineering the crystal growth direction, varying dot shape or size, changing the material composition and/or applying external strain. Numerical investigation of FSS and designing of realistically-sized QD based EPPG demands multiscale-multiphysics many-body simulation efforts. To this end, in this work, we report the coupling of full configuration integration (FCI) method with the atomistic empirical tight-binding (TB) models (10-band sp3s* and 20-band sp3d5s*) to calculate the excitonic energetics and FSS in recently reported multimillion-atom III-V dot-in-nanowire structures. The core of the computational framework comprises two parts: i) NEMO3D, which, using the TB models, can compute single-electron energetics of multimillion-atom structures, and ii) An FCI kernel, which computes the many-particle energetics and wavefunctions using the single-electron outputs as derived from NEMO3D. NEMO3D is a broad platform that handles geometry construction, calculation of strain distributions and built-in potential fields, solving the Schrodinger’s equation and computing optical matrix elements. Three output files from NEMO3D are of particular importance for the FCI toolkit: i) Single-electron energy values, ii) Eigen functions, and iii) Relaxed atom positions of the device. FCI calculates the Coulomb and Exchange matrix elements associated with multi-particles and forms the many-body Hamiltonian. The excitonic states (electron-hole pair) are calculated by solving the many-body Hamiltonian and the value of FSS, if exists, is determined. Recently, nitride-based nanostructured devices have been found to be a promising candidate for single and entangled multi-photon emitter applications. The principal goal of this dissertation is to facilitate the numerical design of InGaN/GaN based dot-in-nanowire EPPG units. To this end, a number of kernels in NEMO3D and FCI packages were augmented. The geometry constructor in NEMO3D was extended for two non-polar planes of wurtzite crystal: m-plane and a-plane. It is found that these two non-polar planes, with much smaller built-in piezoelectric fields, exhibit improved optical transition probabilities than the polar c-plane counterpart. As test cases, light-emitters in dot-in-wire and multiple quantum well (MQW) configurations were simulated and compared in all three (c-plane, m-plane, and a-plane) growth directions. TCAD toolkits are used to simulate the terminal optical characteristics such as internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and spontaneous emission rate. Hexagonal-base truncated-pyramid shaped QD was also added to the NEMO3D geometry constructor as pyramid shaped dots offer directionality and better extraction efficiency of emitted photons, which is important for single or entangled photon generators. The FCI simulator was modified for calculating the excitonic states that involve an electron-hole pair. As for EPPG design, four device structures are considered: i) Disk-in-nanowire on the polar c-plane, ii) pyramid shaped dot-in-nanowire on polar c-plane, iii) Disk-in-nanowire on non-polar m-plane, and iv) Disk-in-nanowire on non-polar a-plane. Simulations are done for different disk thicknesses, material compositions, quantum dot shapes and crystal directions. Results and in-depth analysis are presented on the effects of these design parameters on many-body energetics e.g. binding energy, excitonic bandgaps and FSS. The derivation of excitonic transition probability from single-electron momentum matrix is discussed in detail. Finally, an EPPG design is proposed employing the entangled polarization profiles from two excitonic emissions.