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arXiv:0905.3209 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Narrow basis angle doubles secret key in the BB84 protocol

Ryutaroh Matsumoto, Shun Watanabe

Published Mar 16, 2010• 7 citations
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Abstract

We consider a modified version of the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol in which the angle between two different bases are less than $π/4$. We show that the channel parameter estimate becomes the same as the original protocol with sufficiently many transmitted qubits. On the other hand, the statistical correlation between bits transmitted in one basis and those received in the other basis becomes stronger as the angle between two bases becomes narrower. If the angle is very small, the statistical correlation between bits transmitted in one basis and those received in the other basis is as strong as those received in the same basis as transmitting basis, which means that the modified protocol can generate almost twice as long secret key as the original protocol, provided that Alice and Bob choose two different bases with almost the same probability. We also point out that the reverse reconciliation often gives different amount of secret key to the direct reconciliation over Pauli channels with our modified protocol.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/43/14/145302

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We consider a modified version of the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol in which the angle between two different bases are less than π/4π/4π/4. We show that the channel parameter estimate becomes the same as the original protocol with sufficiently many transmitted qubits. On the other hand, the statistical correlation between bits transmitted in one basis and those received in the other basis becomes stronger as the angle between two bases becomes narrower. If the angle is very small, the statistical correlation between bits transmitted in one basis and those received in the other basis is as strong as those received in the same basis as transmitting basis, which means that the modified protocol can generate almost twice as long secret key as the original protocol, provided that Alice and Bob choose two different bases with almost the same probability. We also point out that the reverse reconciliation often gives different amount of secret key to the direct reconciliation over Pauli channels with our modified protocol.
We consider the mismatched measurements in the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol, in which measuring bases are different from transmitting bases. We give a lower bound on the amount of a secret key that can be extracted from the mismatched measurements. Our lower bound shows that we can extract a secret key from the mismatched measurements with certain quantum channels, such as the channel over which the Hadamard matrix is applied to each qubit with high probability. Moreover, the entropic uncertainty principle implies that one cannot extract the secret key from both matched measurements and mismatched ones simultaneously, when we use the standard information reconciliation and privacy amplification procedure.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) provides a secure way of generating shared cryptographic keys between a sender (Alice) and a receiver (Bob). The original BB84 protocol uses a two-dimensional polarization basis, limiting the information content of a single photon to 1 bit. Using the transverse position of single photons as one basis and the Fourier space as a second basis, one can construct a pair of mutually unbiased higher-dimensional bases. This improves not only the security of the protocol, but also the key generation rate. We present experimental results with a Spatial-Light-Modulator-based encoding scheme employing two nearly orthogonal alphabets with on the order of 103symbols each and an information content of about 10 bit.
Quantum key distribution is considered as one of the safe ways of distributing keys among the frames employed in communication. In 1984, BB84 appeared first as a protocol for QKD. In the present study paper, we proposed a new way of encoding a stream of bits into polarized photons using Legendre Symbol (a/p), where both of the sender and the receiver negotiate of using the function of Legendre symbol. Hence, in this case the proposed protocol uses only quantum channel instead of the classical channel, this leads to less time spent and less quantum error rate occurring comparing with the previous BB84 protocol. The experimental outcome confirms that the proposed protocol delivers efficient results comparing with the original BB84 protocol.
The Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol BB84 has been proven secure against several important types of attacks: the collective attacks and the joint attacks. Here we analyze the security of a modified BB84 protocol, for which information is sent only in the z basis while testing is done in both the z and the x bases, against collective attacks. The proof follows the framework of a previous paper (Boyer, Gelles, and Mor, 2009), but it avoids the classical information-theoretical analysis that caused problems with composability. We show that this modified BB84 protocol is as secure against collective attacks as the original BB84 protocol, and that it requires more bits for testing.
The ideal Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) quantum-key-distribution protocol is based on the preparation and measurement of qubits in two alternative bases differing by an angle of $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$. Any real implementation of the protocol, though, will inevitably introduce misalignments in the preparation of the states and in the alignment of the measurement bases with respect to this ideal situation. Various security proofs take into account (at least partially) such errors, i.e., show how Alice and Bob can still distill a secure key in the presence of these imperfections. Here, we consider the complementary problem: How can Eve exploit misalignments to obtain more information about the key than would be possible in an ideal implementation? Specifically, we investigate the effects of misalignment errors on the security of the BB84 protocol in the case of individual attacks, where necessary and sufficient conditions for security are known. Though the effects of these errors are small for expected deviations from the perfect situation, our results nevertheless show that Alice and Bob can incorrectly conclude that they have established a secure key if the inevitable experimental errors in the state preparation and in the alignment of the measurements are not taken into account. This gives further weight to the idea that the formulation and security analysis of any quantum cryptography protocol should be based on realistic assumptions about the properties of the apparatus used. Additionally, we note that BB84 seems more robust against alignment imperfections if both the xxx and zzz bases are used to generate the key.
The Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol is one of the simplest protocols for implementing quantum key distribution (QKD). In the protocol, the sender and the receiver iteratively choose one of two complementary measurement bases. Regarding the basis choice by the receiver, a passive setup has been adopted in a number of its implementations, including satellite QKD and time-bin encoding. However, conventional theoretical techniques to prove the security of the BB84 protocol are not applicable if the receiver chooses their measurement basis passively, rather than actively, with a biased probability, followed by measurement with threshold detectors. Here we present a fully analytical security proof against coherent attacks for such a decoy-state BB84 protocol with the receiver’s passive basis choice and measurement with threshold detectors. Numerical simulations under practical situations show that the difference in secure key rate between the active and passive implementations of the protocol is negligible except for long communication distances.