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arXiv:0709.3804 · Physical Review A

Simple and secure quantum key distribution with biphotons

I. Bregman, Dorit Aharonov, Michael Ben-Or, H. S. Eisenberg

Published May 7, 2008• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The best qubit one-way quantum-key-distribution (QKD) protocol can tolerate up to 14.6% in the error rate. It has been shown how this rate can be increased by using larger quantum systems. The polarization state of a biphoton can encode a three-level quantum system---a qutrit. The realization of a QKD system with biphotons encounters several problems in generating, manipulating, and detecting such photon states. We define those limitations and find within them a few protocols that perform almost as well as the ideal qutrit protocol. One advantage is that these protocols can be implemented with minor modifications into existing single photon systems. The security of one protocol is proved for the most general coherent attacks and the largest acceptable error rate for this protocol is found to be around 17.7%. For comparison, the security of the best possible qutrit protocol of four mutually unbiased bases was also rigorously analyzed against general attacks, with a proven bound on the acceptable error rate of 21.1%.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.77.050301

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The best qubit one-way quantum-key-distribution (QKD) protocol can tolerate up to 14.6% in the error rate. It has been shown how this rate can be increased by using larger quantum systems. The polarization state of a biphoton can encode a three-level quantum system---a qutrit. The realization of a QKD system with biphotons encounters several problems in generating, manipulating, and detecting such photon states. We define those limitations and find within them a few protocols that perform almost as well as the ideal qutrit protocol. One advantage is that these protocols can be implemented with minor modifications into existing single photon systems. The security of one protocol is proved for the most general coherent attacks and the largest acceptable error rate for this protocol is found to be around 17.7%. For comparison, the security of the best possible qutrit protocol of four mutually unbiased bases was also rigorously analyzed against general attacks, with a proven bound on the acceptable error rate of 21.1%.
We present a high-dimensional measurement device-independent (MDI) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol employing biphotons to encode information. We exploit the biphotons as qutrits to improve the tolerance to error rate. Qutrits have a larger quantum system; hence they carry more bits of classical information and have improved robustness against eavesdropping compared to qubits. Notably, our proposed protocol is independent of measurement devices, thus eliminating the possibility of side-channel attacks. Also, we employ the finite key analysis approach to study the performance of our proposed protocol under realistic conditions where finite resources are used. Furthermore, we simulated the secret key rate for the proposed protocol in terms of the transmission distance for different fixed amounts of signals. The results prove that this protocol achieves a considerable secret key rate for a moderate transmission distance of 90 km by using [Formula: see text] signals. Moreover, the expected secret key rate was simulated to examine our protocol's performance at various intrinsic error rate values, [Formula: see text] caused by misalignment and instability due to the optical system. These results show that reasonable key rates are achieved with a minimum data size of about [Formula: see text] signals which are realizable with the current technology. Thus, implementing MDI-QKD using finite resources while allowing intrinsic errors due to the optical system makes a giant step forward toward realizing practical QKD implementations.
Abstract High-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) offers secure communication with key rates that surpass those of QKD protocols utilizing two-dimensional encoding. However, existing high-dimensional QKD protocols require additional experimental resources, such as multiport interferometers and multiple detectors, thereby increasing the cost of high-dimensional systems and limiting their use. We introduce and analyze a high-dimensional QKD protocol that requires only standard two-dimensional hardware. We provide security analysis against individual and coherent attacks, establishing upper and lower bounds on the secure key rates. We tested our protocol on a standard two-dimensional QKD system over a 40 km fiber link, achieving a twofold increase in secure key rate compared to the standard two-dimensional coherent one-way protocol, without any hardware modifications. This work offers a significant improvement in the performance of already deployed QKD systems through simple software updates and holds broad applicability across various QKD schemes, making high-dimensional QKD practical for widespread use.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two remote users to establish a secret key in the presence of an eavesdropper. The users share quantum states prepared in two mutually unbiased bases: one to generate the key while the other monitors the presence of the eavesdropper. Here, we show that a general ddd-dimension QKD system can be secured by transmitting only a subset of the monitoring states. In particular, we find that there is no loss in the secure key rate when dropping one of the monitoring states. Furthermore, it is possible to use only a single monitoring state if the quantum bit error rates are low enough. We apply our formalism to an experimental d=4d=4d=4 time-phase QKD system, where only one monitoring state is transmitted, and obtain a secret key rate of $17.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2.8$ Mbits/s at a 4 dB channel loss and with a quantum bit error rate of $0.045\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.001$ and $0.037\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.001$ in time and phase bases, respectively, which is 58.4% of the secret key rate that can be achieved with the full setup. This ratio can be increased, potentially up to 100%, if the error rates in time and phase basis are reduced. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to substantially simplify the design of high-dimensional QKD systems, including those that use the spatial or temporal degrees of freedom of the photon, and still outperform qubit-based (d=2d=2d=2) protocols.
Most qubit-based quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols extract the secure key merely from single-photon component of the attenuated lasers. However, with the Scarani-Acin-Ribordy-Gisin 2004 (SARG04) QKD protocol, the unconditionally secure key can be extracted from the two-photon component by modifying the classical post-processing procedure in the BB84 protocol. Employing the merits of SARG04 QKD protocol and six-state preparation, one can extract secure key from the components of single photon up to four photons. In this paper, we provide the exact relations between the secure key rate and the bit error rate in a six-state SARG04 protocol with single-photon, two-photon, three-photon, and four-photon sources. By restricting the mutual information between the phase error and bit error, we obtain a higher secure bit error rate threshold of the multiphoton components than previous works. Besides, we compare the performances of the six-state SARG04 with other prepare-and-measure QKD protocols using decoy states.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) guarantees the security of communication with quantum physics. Most of widely adopted QKD protocols currently encode the key information with binary signal format---qubit, such as the polarization states. Therefore the transmitted information efficiency of the quantum key is intrinsically upper bounded by 1 bit per photon. High dimensional quantum system is a potential candidate for increasing the capacity of single photon. However, due to the difficulty in manipulating and measuring high dimensional quantum systems, the experimental high dimensional QKD is still at its infancy. Here we propose a sort of practical high-speed high dimensional QKD using partial mutual unbiased basis (PMUB) of photon's orbital angular momentum (OAM). Different from the previous OAM encoding, the high dimensional Hilbert space we used is expanded by the OAM states with same mode order, which can be extended to considerably high dimensions and implemented under current state of the art. Because all the OAM states are in the same mode order, the coherence will be well kept after long-distance propagation, and the detection can be achieved by using passive linear optical elements with very high speed. We show that our protocol has high key generation rate and analyze the anti-noise ability under atmospheric turbulence. Furthermore, the security of our protocol based on PMUB is rigorously proved. Our protocol paves a brand new way for the application of photon's OAM in high dimensional QKD field, which can be a breakthrough for high efficiency quantum communications.