Self-coherent phase reference sharing for continuous-variable quantum key distribution

Abstract: Generating "locally" the local oscillator is a fundamental requirement for continous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD), both for performance and security reasons. As a consequence, next-generation CV- QKD systems will have to be implemented with a local local oscillator (LLO). This issue has been explicitly tackled in recent works, where the proposed and implemented approach, that we call LLO-sequential, consists in sequentially (temporally) multiplexing quantum signal optical pulses with phase reference pilot tones optical pulses. We develop a comprehensive analysis of the noise model and the hardware requirements in order to perform LLO CV-QKD. This analysis allows to quantitatively understand one of the limits of CV-QKD implemented with the LLO-sequential approach: such systems, unless operated at very high speed, have very strong requirements in terms of tolerable laser phase noise. LLO-sequential CV-QKD can thus in practice only be implemented with expensive, low phase noise lasers, such as ECL lasers. The main contribution of this work is to introduce designs for LLO CV-QKD based on self-coherence phase sharing, in which the phase reference information and the quantum information are coherently obtained from a single optical wavefront. We propose in particular a design, called LLO-displacement, where the phase reference information is encoded in the displacement of the standard CV-QKD Gaussian modulated coherent state (GMCS) protocol. We analyze the performance and the hardware requirements of the LLO-displacement design and our results indicate that it can be used to perform CV-QKD over distances up to 100 km with realistic and affordable hardware, in particular with standard telecom equipment and low cost DFB lasers. This opens a practical path towards the development of coherent quantum communications systems compatible with next-generation networks requirements.