Quantum random number generator based on photonic emission in semiconductors

We report upon the realization of a novel fast nondeterministic random number generator whose randomness relies on the 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 the restartable clock method 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.