Quantum random number generator based on photonic emission in semiconductors

Abstract

We report upon a novel principle for realization of a fast nondeterministic random number generator whose randomness relies on intrinsic randomness of the quantum physical processes of photonic emission in semiconductors and subsequent detection by the photoelectric effect. Timing information of detected photons is used to generate binary random digits-bits. The bit extraction method based on restartable clock theoretically eliminates both bias and autocorrelation while reaching efficiency of almost 0.5 bits per random event. A prototype has been built and statistically tested.