He, D.
, Kuo, P.
, Li-Baboud, Y.
, Rahmouni, A.
, Shaw, M.
, Korzh, B.
and Gerrits, T.
(2025),
Single-photon time-of-flight measurements for benchmarking time transfer in quantum networks, Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, [online], https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.577755, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960329
(Accessed December 4, 2025)
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Single-photon time-of-flight measurements for benchmarking time transfer in quantum networks
Published
Author(s)
Dongxing He, , , , Matthew Shaw, Boris Korzh,
Abstract
We propose a single-photon time-of-flight (ToF) measurement method to benchmark fiber-path delay estimation in optical two-way time and frequency transfer (OTWTFT) protocols. The single-photon ToF measurement yields uncertainties better than 2 ps (0.5 mm fiber-path-length uncertainty) at 1 s integration times for a deployed 120 km (loopback) fiber. Differences between the ToF and the roundtrip time measurements from a White Rabbit precision time protocol appear to correlate with the clock phase error between two White Rabbit switches. The results suggest that augmenting single-photon ToF measurements with existing OTWTFT protocols could enhance the precision to sub-10-ps levels at metropolitan distances. Such a level of precision will be critical for synchronization in quantum networks.Citation
Journal of Optical Communications and Networking
Volume
17
Issue
12
Pub Type
Journals
Download Paper
Keywords
time synchronization, quantum networking
Citation
Issues
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Created November 14, 2025, Updated December 3, 2025