Fully photonics-based physical random bit generator

We propose a fully photonics-based approach for ultrafast physical random bit generation. This approach exploits a compact nonlinear loop mirror (called a terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer, TOAD) to sample the chaotic optical waveform in an all-optical domain and then generate random bit streams through further comparison with a threshold level. This method can efficiently overcome the electronic jitter bottleneck confronted by existing RBGs in practice. A proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates that this method can continuously extract 5 Gb/s random bit streams from the chaotic output of a distributed feedback laser diode (DFB-LD) with optical feedback. This limited generation rate is caused by the bandwidth of the used optical chaos.