Experimental Quantum Communication without a Shared Reference Frame

Abstract

We present an experimental realization of a robust quantum communication scheme [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 220501 (2004)] using pairs of photons entangled in polarization and time. Our method overcomes errors due to collective rotation of the polarization modes (e.g., birefringence in optical fiber or misalignment), is insensitive to the phase's fluctuation of the interferometer, and does not require any shared reference frame including time reference, except the need to label different photons. The practical robustness of the scheme is further shown by implementing a variation of the Bennett-Brassard 1984 quantum key distribution protocol over 1 km optical fiber.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Quantum key distribution over 122 km of standard telecom fiber
• Decoherence-free subspaces and subsystems for a collectively depolarizing bosonic channel

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Reference frames, superselection rules, and quantum information
• Quantum communication without alignment using multiple-qubit single-photon states
• Field test of a practical secure communication network with decoy-state quantum cryptography
• Experimental polarization encoded quantum key distribution over optical fibres with real-time continuous birefringence compensation
• Six-qubit permutation-based decoherence-free orthogonal basis
• Preventing Multipartite Disentanglement by Local Modulations
• Robust photonic entanglement distribution via state-independent encoding onto decoherence-free subspace
• Decoy states for quantum key distribution based on decoherence-free subspaces
• Secret quantum communication of a reference frame
• Experimental ancilla-assisted qubit transmission against correlated noise using quantum parity checking
• Quantum repeaters free of polarization disturbance and phase noise