Practical Semi-Device-Independent Quantum random number generators*

Quantum random number generators (QRNG) offer a significant advantage over classical generators. However, they often need to trust their internal devices, making them vulnerable in case of imperfections or malicious actions. Recently, Semi-Device-Independent (Semi-DI) protocols have been investigated because of their increased security with minimal impact on the performances. Here, we describe a series of works where different Semi-DI protocols are proposed and experimentally realized using photonic systems. These protocols exploit both discrete and continuous degrees of freedom of light to generate private randomness. In particular, we describe Source-DI protocols where the quantum source is untrusted [1,2], showing experimentally generation rates up to 17 Gbps. Then we describe Semi-DI protocols, where both the measurement and the source are untrusted, but an energy bound is assumed [3,4]. For these protocols, we experimentally demonstrated up to 113 Mbps of secure generation.
[1] M. Avesani, et al. Nature Communications 9.1, 5365, (2018)
[2] M. Avesani, et al., arXiv:2010.05798
[3] M. Avesani, et al., arXiv:2004.08344
[4] H. Tebyanian, et al. arXiv:2009.08897