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arXiv:0802.2419 · Physical Review A

Tomography increases key rates of quantum-key-distribution protocols

Shun Watanabe, Ryutaroh Matsumoto, Tomohiko Uyematsu

Published Oct 17, 2008• 56 citations
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Abstract

We construct a practically implementable classical processing for the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol and the six-state protocol that fully utilizes the accurate channel estimation method, which is also known as the quantum tomography. Our proposed processing yields at least as high a key rate as the standard processing by Shor and Preskill. We show two examples of quantum channels over which the key rate of our proposed processing is strictly higher than the standard processing. In the second example, the BB84 protocol with our proposed processing yields a positive key rate even though the so-called error rate is higher than the 25% limit.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.042316

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We construct a practically implementable classical processing for the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol and the six-state protocol that fully utilizes the accurate channel estimation method, which is also known as the quantum tomography. Our proposed processing yields at least as high a key rate as the standard processing by Shor and Preskill. We show two examples of quantum channels over which the key rate of our proposed processing is strictly higher than the standard processing. In the second example, the BB84 protocol with our proposed processing yields a positive key rate even though the so-called error rate is higher than the 25% limit.
Shor and Preskill (see Phys. Rev. Lett., vol.85, p.441, 2000) have provided a simple proof of security of the standard quantum key distribution scheme by Bennett and Brassard (1984) by demonstrating a connection between key distribution and entanglement purification protocols (EPPs) with one-way communications. Here, we provide proofs of security of standard quantum key distribution schemes, Bennett and Brassard and the six-state scheme, against the most general attack, by using the techniques of two-way entanglement purification. We demonstrate clearly the advantage of classical post-processing with two-way classical communications over classical post-processing with only one-way classical communications in quantum key distribution (QKD). This is done by the explicit construction of a new protocol for (the error correction/detection and privacy amplification of) Bennett and Brassard that can tolerate a bit error rate of up to 18.9%, which is higher than what any Bennett and Brassard scheme with only one-way classical communications can possibly tolerate. Moreover, we demonstrate the advantage of the six-state scheme over Bennett and Brassard by showing that the six-state scheme can strictly tolerate a higher bit error rate than Bennett and Brassard. In particular, our six-state protocol can tolerate a bit error rate of 26.4%, which is higher than the upper bound of 25% bit error rate for any secure Bennett and Brassard protocol. Consequently, our protocols may allow higher key generation rate and remain secure over longer distances than previous protocols. Our investigation suggests that two-way entanglement purification is a useful tool in the study of advantage distillation, error correction, and privacy amplification protocols.
The Shor-Preskill proof of the security of the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) quantum key distribution protocol relies on the theoretical existence of good classical error-correcting codes with the ``dual-containing'' property. A practical implementation of the BB84 protocol thus requires explicit and efficiently decodable constructions of such codes, which are not known. On the other hand, modern coding theory abounds with non-dual-containing codes with excellent performance and efficient decoding algorithms. We show that the dual-containing constraint can be lifted at a small price: instead of a key distribution protocol, an efficiently implementable key expansion protocol is obtained, capable of increasing the size of a preshared key by a constant factor.
The Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol is the most widely implemented quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme. However, despite enormous theoretical and experimental efforts in the past decades, the security of this protocol with imperfect sources has not yet been rigorously established. In this paper, we address this shortcoming and prove the security of the BB84 protocol in the presence of multiple source imperfections, including state preparation flaws and side channels, such as Trojan-horse attacks, mode dependencies and classical correlations between the emitted pulses. To do so, we consider a modified BB84 protocol that exploits the basis mismatched events, which are often discarded in standard security analyses of this scheme; and employ the reference technique, a powerful mathematical tool to accommodate source imperfections in the security analysis of QKD. Moreover, we compare the achievable secret-key rate of the modified BB84 protocol with that of the three-state loss-tolerant protocol, and show that the addition of a fourth state, while redundant in ideal conditions, significantly improves the estimation of the leaked information in the presence of source imperfections, resulting in a better performance. This paper demonstrates the relevance of the BB84 protocol in guaranteeing implementation security, taking us a step further towards closing the existing gap between theory and practice of QKD.
We apply the techniques introduced by Kraus et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 080501 (2005)] to prove security of quantum-key-distribution (QKD) schemes using two-way classical post-processing as well as QKD schemes based on weak coherent pulses instead of single-photon pulses. As a result, we obtain improved bounds on the secret-key rate of these schemes. For instance, for the six-state protocol using two-way classical post-processing we recover the known threshold for the maximum tolerated bit error rate of the channel, 0.276, but demonstrate that the secret-key rate can be substantially higher than previously shown. Moreover, we provide a detailed analysis of the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) and the SARG protocol using weak coherent pulses (with and without decoy states) in the so-called untrusted-device scenario, where the adversary might influence the detector efficiencies. We evaluate lower bounds on the secret-key rate for realistic channel parameters and show that, for channels with low noise level, the bounds for the SARG protocol are superior to those for the BB84 protocol, whereas this advantage disappears with increasing noise level.
This note presents a method of public key distribution using quantum communication of n photons that simultaneously provides a high probability that the bits have not been tampered. It is a three-state variant of the quantum method of Bennett and Brassard (BB84) where the transmission states have been decreased from 4 to 3 and the detector states have been increased from 2 to 3. Under certain assumptions regarding method of attack, it provides superior performance (in terms of the number of usable key bits) for n < 18 m, where m is the number of key bits used to verify the integrity of the process in the BB84-protocol.