Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 67: Quantum Information: Quantum Communication II

Q 67.5: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2015, 12:00–12:15, K/HS1

Large-Alphabet Quantum Key Distribution Using Spatially Encoded Light — •Tristan Tentrup, Peter Hooijschuur, Reinier van der Meer, Georgios Ctistis, and Pepijn Pinkse — University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

Secure communication between a sender (Alice) and a receiver (Bob) is a challenging task in today's society. In order to be able to exchange information in a secure way, Alice and Bob have to share a key to encrypt/decode the information. One method to do that is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using the BB84 protocol with single photons. Usually, the two-dimensional polarization basis is used to transmit information, but going to a higher dimensional basis (larger alphabet) increases security and amount of information carried by a single photon. We present our experimental results with an encoding scheme using a spatial light modulator (SLM) allowing in principle an alphabet of the order of 10^4 characters (>13 bit per photon).