- Cañas, G;
- Vera, N;
- Cariñe, J;
- González, P;
- Cardenas, J;
- Connolly, PWR;
- Przysiezna, A;
- Gómez, ES;
- Figueroa, M;
- Vallone, G;
- Villoresi, P;
- da Silva, T Ferreira;
- Xavier, GB;
- Lima, G
Multiplexing is a strategy to augment the transmission capacity of a
communication system. It consists of combining multiple signals over the same
data channel and it has been very successful in classical communications.
However, the use of enhanced channels has only reached limited practicality in
quantum communications (QC) as it requires the complex manipulation of quantum
systems of higher dimensions. Considerable effort is being made towards QC
using high-dimensional quantum systems encoded into the transverse momentum of
single photons but, so far, no approach has been proven to be fully compatible
with the existing telecommunication infrastructure. Here, we overcome such a
technological challenge and demonstrate a stable and secure high-dimensional
decoy-state quantum key distribution session over a 0.3 km long multicore
optical fiber. The high-dimensional quantum states are defined in terms of the
multiple core modes available for the photon transmission over the fiber, and
the decoy-state analysis demonstrates that our technique enables a positive
secret key generation rate up to 25 km of fiber propagation. Finally, we show
how our results build up towards a high-dimensional quantum network composed of
free-space and fiber based links