METHOD AND DEVICE FOR OPTICS BASED QUANTUM RANDOM NUMBER GENERATION

摘要

A device for random number generation based on an optical process of quantum nature, including a light source emitting photons randomly, a light detector adapted to absorb the randomly emitted photons and to measure a number n of photons produced by the light source in a time interval T, and a randomness extractor. The detector includes a photon sensor acting as a photon-to-electron converter, an amplifier for converting the electron signal received from the photon sensor into a voltage and amplifying the voltage signal, as well as an analog-to-digital converter for processing the amplified signal received from the amplifier by encoding the amplified signal into digital values and sending these digital values to the randomness extractor for further processing such as to produce quantum random numbers (QRNs) based on the number of photons produced by the light source in a time interval T.

主权项

1. Device for random number generation based on an optical process of quantum nature comprising:
a light source emitting photons randomly, a light detector comprising a photon sensor adapted to absorb the randomly emitted photons, an amplifier for converting an electron signal received from the photon sensor into a voltage and amplifying the voltage signal, and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for treating the amplified signal received from the amplifier by encoding the amplified signal into digital values and sending these digital values to a randomness extractor of the device for further processing, wherein the randomness extractor is adapted to generate a number k of high-entropy output bits yj from a number l>k of lower-entropy raw input bits ri, the photon sensor of the detector is adapted to operate in a linear regime and acts as a photon-to-electron converter to allow the detector to be adapted to measure a number n of photons produced by said light source in a time interval T, the randomness extractor is adapted, for raw input bits ri with entropy s per bit, to generate output bits yj having a probability that the output bits yj deviate from a perfectly random bit string bounded by ε=2−(sl−k)/2, such as to produce quantum random numbers (QRNs) based on said number n of photons produced by the light source in the time interval T.