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arXiv:1710.00370 · IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics

Light Source Monitoring in Quantum Key Distribution With Single-Photon Detector at Room Temperature

Gan Wang, Zhengyu Li, Yucheng Qiao, Ziyang Chen, Xiang Peng, Hong Guo

Published Apr 17, 2018• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Photon number resolving monitoring is a practical light source monitoring scheme in quantum key distribution (QKD) systems and can, effectively, reduce the risks due to the effects of untrusted sources. This scheme requires a single-photon detector, normally working at low temperature to suppress its dark count rate. In this paper, we use a room-temperature detector and show that the dark count rate is nearly irrelevant to the monitoring performance in our scheme, thus can sufficiently reduce the afterpulsing effect of the detectors as well as relax the requirements on their working conditions and integration complexity, which would be highly desirable for practical high-speed QKD systems with imperfect sources. Furthermore, the influences of parameter drifts at room temperature are analyzed, and the monitoring scheme is testified in a real QKD system.

DOI
10.1109/jqe.2018.2827569

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The most important goal of quantum communication is to distribute the encryption key between the transmitter and the receiver. The optimal situation in Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) between transmitter and receiver is to increase the key distribution rate per second, increase the transmission distance, and reduce the error in key distribution. Several protocols used for QKD. The most important of QKD protocols is the BB84. One of the challenges leading to errors in quantum protocols is generating error pulses in single-photon detectors. These pulses caused by the inherent effects of quantum devices. They can cause wrong detection in the receiver. Many measures have been taken in the design and construction of single-photon detectors to reduce this error pulses, but it is not possible to eliminate all of them. Afterpulse and dark counts are two types of unwanted pulses that occur with single-photon detectors. In this paper, a new QKD protocol is proposed. It is an upgrade of the BB84 protocol and can reduce the effects of unwanted pulses such as afterpulse and dark counts in QKD avalanche detectors.
To improve the performance of a quantum-key-distribution (QKD) system, high speed, low dark count single photon detectors (or low-noise homodyne detectors) are required. However, in practice, a fast detector is usually noisy. Here, we propose a dual-detector method to improve the performance of a practical QKD system with realistic detectors: the legitimate receiver randomly uses either a fast (but noisy) detector or a quiet (but slow) detector to measure the incoming quantum signals. The measurement results from the quiet detector can be used to bound the eavesdropper's information, while the measurement results from the fast detector are used to generate a secure key. We apply this idea to various QKD protocols. Simulation results demonstrate significant improvements of the secure key rate in the lower loss regime in both Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol with ideal single photon source and Gaussian-modulated coherent states protocol; while for decoy-state BB84 protocol with weak coherent source, the improvement is moderate. We also discuss various practical issues in implementing the dual-detector scheme.