Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Chair in Photonics, LMOPS EA-4423 Laboratory, CentraleSupélec and Université de Lorraine, Metz 57070, France.
Science. 2021 Feb 26;371(6532):948-952. doi: 10.1126/science.abc2666.
Random numbers are widely used for information security, cryptography, stochastic modeling, and quantum simulations. Key technical challenges for physical random number generation are speed and scalability. We demonstrate a method for ultrafast generation of hundreds of random bit streams in parallel with a single laser diode. Spatiotemporal interference of many lasing modes in a specially designed cavity is introduced as a scheme for greatly accelerated random bit generation. Spontaneous emission, caused by quantum fluctuations, produces stochastic noise that makes the bit streams unpredictable. We achieve a total bit rate of 250 terabits per second with off-line postprocessing, which is more than two orders of magnitude higher than the current postprocessing record. Our approach is robust, compact, and energy-efficient, with potential applications in secure communication and high-performance computation.
随机数被广泛应用于信息安全、密码学、随机建模和量子模拟等领域。物理随机数生成的关键技术挑战是速度和可扩展性。我们展示了一种使用单个激光二极管同时生成数百个随机比特流的超快方法。在专门设计的腔中，许多激光模式的时空干涉被引入作为一种大大加速随机比特生成的方案。由于量子涨落引起的自发发射产生了使比特流不可预测的随机噪声。我们通过离线后处理实现了 250 太比特每秒的总比特率，比当前的后处理记录高出两个数量级以上。我们的方法具有鲁棒性、紧凑性和节能性，有望在安全通信和高性能计算中得到应用。
