Non-Poissonian statistics from Poissonian light sources with application to passive decoy state quantum key distribution

We propose a method to prepare different non-Poissonian signal pulses from sources of Poissonian photon number distribution, using only linear optical elements and threshold photon detectors. This method allows a simple passive preparation of decoy states for quantum key distribution. We show that the resulting key rates are comparable with the performance of active choices of intensities of Poissonian signals.