Laser's Quantum Fluctuations Provide a Better, Faster Source of Random Numbers

Laser's Quantum Fluctuations Provide a Better, Faster Source of Random Numbers: Ben Sussman at the National Research Council in Ottawa works with a laser pulse lasting a few trillionths of a second, and shines it at a 3-mm piece of diamond crystal. The interactions with vacuum fluctuations changes the incoming photons, whose signals are amplified and converted into binary to generate random bit sequences...
Other researchers have tapped quantum uncertainty to build truly random sequences, including a Chinese team that used quantum noise last year to introduce small frequency changes in laser light. Their method achieved 300 megabits per second of random data, pretty fast but still not great compared to modern bit-rate requirements. Sussman says his method is much faster, capable of producing gigabit-per-second random data.