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arXiv:1207.0392 · Physical Review A

Three-intensity decoy-state method for device-independent quantum key distribution with basis-dependent errors

Xiang‐Bin Wang

Published Jan 18, 2013• 214 citations
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Abstract

We study the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) in practice with limited resources when there are only three different states in implementing the decoy-state method and when there are basis-dependent coding errors. We present general formulas for the decoy-state method for two-pulse sources with three different states, which can be applied to the recently proposed MDIQKD with imperfect single-photon sources such as the coherent states or the heralded states from the parametric down-conversion. We point out that the existing result for secure MDIQKD with source coding errors does not always hold. We find that very accurate source coding is not necessary. In particular, we loosen the precision of the existing result by several orders of magnitude.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.87.012320

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We study the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) in practice with limited resources when there are only three different states in implementing the decoy-state method and when there are basis-dependent coding errors. We present general formulas for the decoy-state method for two-pulse sources with three different states, which can be applied to the recently proposed MDIQKD with imperfect single-photon sources such as the coherent states or the heralded states from the parametric down-conversion. We point out that the existing result for secure MDIQKD with source coding errors does not always hold. We find that very accurate source coding is not necessary. In particular, we loosen the precision of the existing result by several orders of magnitude.
We study the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) in practice with limited resources, when there are only three different states in implementing the decoy-state method. We present a tighter explicit formula to estimate the lower bound of the yield of two-single-photon pulses sent by Alice and Bob. Moreover, we show that the bounding of this yield and phase flip error of single-photon pulse pairs can be further improved by using other constraints which can be solved by a simple and explicit program. Our methods here can significantly improve the key rate and the secure distance of MDI-QKD with only three intensities.
At present, most of the measurement-device-independent quantum key distributions (MDI-QKD) are based on weak coherent sources and limited in the transmission distance under realistic experimental conditions, e.g., considering the finite-size-key effects. Hence in this paper, we propose a new biased decoy-state scheme using heralded single-photon sources for the three-intensity MDI-QKD, where we prepare the decoy pulses only in X basis and adopt both the collective constraints and joint parameter estimation techniques. Compared with former schemes with WCS or HSPS, after implementing full parameter optimizations, our scheme gives distinct reduced quantum bit error rate in the X basis and thus show excellent performance, especially when the data size is relatively small.
Quantum key distribution involving decoy-states is a significant application of quantum information. By using three-intensity decoy-states of single-photon-added coherent sources, we propose a practically realizable scheme on quantum key distribution which approaches very closely the ideal asymptotic case of an infinite number of decoy-states. We make a comparative study between this scheme and two other existing ones, i.e., two-intensity decoy-states with single-photon-added coherent sources, and three-intensity decoy-states with weak coherent sources. Through numerical analysis, we demonstrate the advantages of our scheme in secure transmission distance and the final key generation rate.
In this paper, we put forward a new approach towards realizing measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with passive heralded single-photon sources. In this approach, both Alice and Bob prepare the parametric down-conversion source, where the heralding photons are labeled according to different types of clicks from the local detectors, and the heralded ones can correspondingly be marked with different tags at the receiver's side. Then one can obtain four sets of data through using only one-intensity of pump light by observing different kinds of clicks of local detectors. By employing the newest formulae to do parameter estimation, we could achieve very precise prediction for the two-single-photon pulse contribution. Furthermore, by carrying out corresponding numerical simulations, we compare the new method with other practical schemes of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution. We demonstrate that our new proposed passive scheme can exhibit remarkable improvement over the conventional three-intensity decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with either heralded single-photon sources or weak coherent sources. Besides, it does not need intensity modulation and can thus diminish source-error defects existing in several other active decoy-state methods. Therefore, if taking intensity modulating errors into account, our new method will show even more brilliant performance.
In this paper, we study the unconditional security of the so-called measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDIQKD) with the basis-dependent flaw in the context of phase encoding schemes. We propose two schemes for the phase encoding: The first one employs a phase locking technique with the use of non-phase-randomized coherent pulses, and the second one uses conversion of standard Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) phase encoding pulses into polarization modes. We prove the unconditional security of these schemes and we also simulate the key generation rate based on simple device models that accommodate imperfections. Our simulation results show the feasibility of these schemes with current technologies and highlight the importance of the state preparation with good fidelity between the density matrices in the two bases. Since the basis-dependent flaw is a problem not only for MDIQKD but also for standard quantum key distribution (QKD), our work highlights the importance of an accurate signal source in practical QKD systems.
To date, only active-decoy-state methods have been adopted in current measurement-device-independent (MDI) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols, causing security loopholes when modulating multiple light intensities with practical devices. To solve this problem, the passive-decoy-state method will be a good choice. Until today practical passive-decoy-state MDI QKD is still missing. In this paper, based on a recently discussed structure of heralded single-photon sources, we propose a passive-decoy-state MDI QKD protocol. In present work, one does not need to modulate light sources into different intensities, but utilizes the built-in local detection events to passively generate different decoy states. Furthermore, through carrying out an appropriate mathematical method, we are able to give very precise estimations for single-photon-pair contributions. As a result, our protocol can exhibit distinct advantages compared with state-of-the-art MDI QKD schemes even when the finite-key-size effect is taken into account. Therefore, our protocol seems a promising candidate to enhance both the security and performance of MDI QKD in practical implementation.