  Proposed in 1984, quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two users to exchange
provably secure keys via a potentially insecure quantum channel. Since then,
QKD has attracted much attention and significant progress has been made in both
theory and practice. On the application front, however, the operating distance
of practical fibre-based QKD systems is limited to about 150 km, which is
mainly due to the high background noise produced by commonly used semiconductor
single-photon detectors (SPDs) and the stringent demand on the minimum
classical- post-processing (CPP) block size. Here, we present a compact and
autonomous QKD system that is capable of distributing provably-secure
cryptographic key over 307 km of ultra-low-loss optical fibre (51.9 dB loss).
The system is based on a recently developed standard semiconductor (inGaAs)
SPDs with record low background noise and a novel efficient finite-key security
analysis for QKD. This demonstrates the feasibility of practical long-distance
QKD based on standard fibre optic telecom components.
