Phase-locking an interferometer with single-photon detections

We report on a novel phase-locking technique for fiber-based Mach–Zehnder interferometers based on discrete single-photon detections, and demonstrate this in a setup. Our interferometer decodes relative-phase-encoded optical pulse pairs for quantum key distribution applications and requires no locking laser in addition to the weak received signal. Our new simple locking scheme is shown to produce an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck dynamic and achieve optimal phase noise for a given count rate. In case of wavelength drifts that arise during the reception of Doppler-shifted satellite signals, the arm-length difference gets continuously readjusted to keep the interferometer phase stable.