Robust Quantum Random Number Generation with Silicon Nanocrystals Light Source

A robust quantum random number generation methodology has been developed and tested. The physical setup is based on a silicon nanocrystals light source coupled with a Si single photon avalanche diode driving a fully synchronous digital logic in a field-programmable gate array. After detailed analyses of the source and the detector, methods have been developed to make the nonidealities of the system and their consequent drawbacks decoupled from the quality of the generated random numbers. All the statistical tests in the national institute of standards and technology tests suite and the TestU01 Alphabit battery are consistently passed without a postprocessing operation on the raw data and without any feedback action on the photon source or any other parameter of the system. The maximum demonstrated bit-rate reaches 1.68 Mb/s, with an efficiency of 4 bits per detected photon. The modeling proves that the system is not influenced by variations of the internal and external parameters, such as the aging of the components and changing temperature.