Quantum communication with time-bin entanglement over a wavelength-multiplexed fiber network

Abstract

In a quantum network involving multiple communicating parties, an important goal is to establish high-quality pairwise entanglement among the users without introducing multiple entangled-photon sources which would necessarily complicate the overall network setup. Moreover, it is preferable that the pairwise entanglement of photons is in the time-bin degree of freedom as the photonic time-bin qubit is ideally suited for fiber-optic distribution. Here, we report an experimental demonstration of a field-deployable quantum communication network involving multiple users, all of whom share pairwise entanglement in the time-bin degree of freedom of photons. In particular, by utilizing a single spontaneous-parametric down-conversion source which produces a broadband pair of photons and the wavelength-division demultiplexing/multiplexing technology, all the communicating parties within the network are always simultaneously ready for quantum communication. To further demonstrate the practical feasibility of a quantum network with time-bin entanglement over a wavelength-multiplexed fiber network, we demonstrate entangled-photon quantum key distribution with three users, each separated by 60 km of optical fibers.