Intrinsic quantum correlations of weak coherent states for quantum communication

Intrinsic quantum correlations of weak coherent states are observed between two parties through a novel detection scheme, which can be used as a supplement to the existence decoy-state Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol and the differential phase-shift quantum key distribution (DPS-QKD) protocol. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we generate bipartite correlations of weak coherent states using weak local oscillator fields in two spatially separated balanced homodyne detections. We employ a nonlinearity of postmeasurement method to obtain the bipartite correlations from two single-field interferences at individual homodyne measurements. This scheme is then used to demonstrate bits correlations between two parties over a distance of 10 km through a transmission fiber. We believe that the scheme can add another physical layer of security to these protocols for quantum key distribution.