近年来，在物理随机数生成速率的提高方面取得了很大的研究进展，但仍存在产生过程复杂和体积庞大等缺陷。针对该问题，文章从理论上提出了利用光反馈下垂直腔面发射激光器（VCSEL）模式跳变产生随机数的方案。通过光反馈扰动使VCSEL产生模式跳变，再由方波信号对注入电流进行调制，周期性重启VCSEL使其由非激射状态切换到模式跳变状态，最终输出随机脉冲序列实现随机数的产生。研究结果表明，具有通过随机性验证的无偏随机数能够以Gbit/s量级的速率连续产生。文章所提方案消除了对光/电转换和后处理操作的需求，简化了当前随机数的产生结构，且具有实现低成本光子集成随机数发生器的潜力。

All-optical analog-to-digital conversion is a paramount issue in modern science. How to implement real-time and ultrafast quantization to optical pulses with different intensities in an all-optical domain is a central problem. Here, we report a real-time demonstration of an all-optical quantization scheme based on slicing the supercontinuum in a nonlinear fiber. In comparison with previous schemes through off-line analysis of the power of different optical spectral components in the supercontinuum, this, to the best of our knowledge, is the first demonstration of such functionality online in the time domain. Moreover, the extinction ratio among the quantized outputs can exceed 10 dB, which further confirms the feasibility of the proposed quantization scheme. The current 3 bit resolution in the proof-of-principle experiment is limited by the current experimental condition, but it can be expected to be greatly enhanced through improving both the spectral width of the generated supercontinuum and the number of filtering channels used.