Fast single-photon detectors and real-time key distillation enable high secret-key-rate quantum key distribution systems.

Quantum key distribution has emerged as the most viable scheme to guarantee information security in the presence of large-scale quantum computers and, thanks to the continuous progress made in the past 20 years, it is now commercially available. However, the secret key rates remain limited to just over 10 Mbps due to several bottlenecks on the receiver side. Here we present a custom multipixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector that is designed to guarantee high count rates and precise timing discrimination. Leveraging the performance of the detector and coupling it to fast acquisition and real-time key distillation electronics, we remove two major roadblocks and achieve a considerable increase of the secret key rates with respect to the state of the art. In combination with a simple 2.5-GHz clocked time-bin quantum key distribution system, we can generate secret keys at a rate of 64 Mbps over a distance of 10.0 km and at a rate of 3.0 Mbps over a distance of 102.4 km with real-time key distillation.

A violation of the uncertainty principle implies a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Uncertainty relations state that there exist certain incompatible measurements, to which the outcomes cannot be simultaneously predicted. While the exact incompatibility of quantum measurements dictated by such uncertainty relations can be inferred from the mathematical formalism of quantum theory, the question remains whether there is any more fundamental reason for the uncertainty relations to have this exact form. What, if any, would be the operational consequences if we were able to go beyond any of these uncertainty relations? Here we give a strong argument that justifies uncertainty relations in quantum theory by showing that violating them implies that it is also possible to violate the second law of thermodynamics. More precisely, we show that violating the uncertainty relations in quantum mechanics leads to a thermodynamic cycle with positive net work gain, which is very unlikely to exist in nature.

Nonlocality is transitive.

We show a transitivity property of nonlocal correlations: There exist tripartite nonsignaling correlations of which the bipartite marginals between A and B as well as B and C are nonlocal and any tripartite nonsignaling system between A, B, and C consistent with them must be such that the bipartite marginal between A and C is also nonlocal. This property represents a step towards ruling out certain alternative models for the explanation of quantum correlations such as hidden communication at finite speed. Whereas it is not possible to rule out this model experimentally, it is the goal of our approach to demonstrate this explanation to be logically inconsistent: either the communication cannot remain hidden, or its speed has to be infinite. The existence of a three-party system that is pairwise nonlocal is of independent interest in the light of the monogamy property of nonlocality.