Experimental Time-of-Arrival Quantum Random Number Generation with Dead Time Overestimation

A measurement-based validation of theoretical results on quantum random number generators (QRNGs) is considered in the paper. We have designed an experimental setup built around a single-photon detector to record random datasets of photon arrival time differences with various parameter settings. The collected datasets are used to generate random bit sequences with and without dead time overestimation. The statistical properties of the bit sequences are compared with analytical results on the one hand and assessed with four of the most popular statistical test suites on the other hand. The measurement results validate that the dead time overestimation algorithm helps to eliminate unwanted correlations from the generated bit sequences in practice.