Abstract
With the growing availability of experimental loophole-free Bell tests1,2,3,4,5, it has become possible to implement a new class of device-independent random number generators whose output can be certified6,7 to be uniformly random without requiring a detailed model of the quantum devices used8,9,10. However, all these experiments require many input bits to certify a small number of output bits, and it is an outstanding challenge to develop a system that generates more randomness than is consumed. Here we devise a device-independent spot-checking protocol that consumes only uniform bits without requiring any additional bits with a specific bias. Implemented with a photonic loophole-free Bell test, we can produce 24% more certified output bits (1,181,264,237) than consumed input bits (953,301,640). The experiment ran for 91.0 h, creating randomness at an average rate of 3,606 bits s–1 with a soundness error bounded by 5.7 × 10−7 in the presence of classical side information. Our system allows for greater trust in public sources of randomness, such as randomness beacons11, and may one day enable high-quality private sources of randomness as the device footprint shrinks.
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Data availability
Source data are available for this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The code that produces the results presented in this work is available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank C. Miller and S. Glancy for help with reviewing this paper. This work includes contributions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which are not subject to US copyright. The use of trade names does not imply endorsement by the US government. The work is supported by the National Science Foundation RAISE-TAQS (award 1839223); European Research Council projects AQUMET (280169) and ERIDIAN (713682); European Union project FET Innovation Launchpad UVALITH (800901); the Spanish MINECO projects OCARINA (grant ref. PGC2018-097056-B-I00), Q-CLOCKS (PCI2018-092973) and the Severo Ochoa programme (SEV-2015-0522); Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca project (2017-SGR-1354); Fundació Privada Cellex and Generalitat de Catalunya (CERCA program); Quantum Technology Flagship project macQsimal (820393); Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN ZULF-NMR (766402); and EMPIR project USOQS (17FUN03).
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Contributions
L.K.S. and Y.Z. led the project and contributed equally to this work. Y.Z. and E.K. devised the protocol, and L.K.S., M.J.S and M.D.M. performed the experiment and collected the data. L.K.S., J.C.B., C.S., M.J.S., M.D.M., C.A., W.A., M.W.M., R.P.M. and S.W.N. contributed to the experimental design and setup. Y.Z., M.A.A., H.F., J.O. and E.K. developed the security analysis method and conducted the data analysis. L.K.S., Y.Z., M.A.A. and E.K. wrote the manuscript.
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Peer review information Nature Physics thanks Renato Renner and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary discussions on the protocol for randomness expansion as well as its implementation and data analysis, Figs. 1–3 and Tables I–V.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 3
Estimated expansion ratios and success probabilities.
Source Data Fig. 4
Running entropies of the inputs and outputs in our experiment.
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Shalm, L.K., Zhang, Y., Bienfang, J.C. et al. Device-independent randomness expansion with entangled photons. Nat. Phys. 17, 452–456 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01153-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01153-4
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