Modulation instability in a highly nonlinear fiber for discrete-time pulsed random bit generation

A simple yet high-speed scheme by utilizing modulation instability (MI) on the discrete-time generation of random bits is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. We develop MI pulses by pumping a highly nonlinear fiber in the anomalous dispersion regime using a mode-locked laser. MI pulses contain fluctuating pulse-to-pulse variations of peak intensities for extraction into random bits. At a repetition rate of 10 GHz, 5 bits are extracted from each pulse in generating random bits at 50 Gbps, as verified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology test suite.