Quantum Key Distribution, as a branch of quantum mechanics in cryptography, can distribute keys between legal communication parties in an unconditionally secure manner, thus can realize in transmitting confidential information with unconditional security. We consider a Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution protocol with 3-state systems for the first time, where the phase of the coherent state is 3,thus we propose three different ways to response to every successful detection and two parties gain their raw keys by "flip and flip". The simulation results show that compared with Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution protocol where the phase equals 2, the proposed protocol breaks the limit of linear key generation rate in a shorter distance, and the longest practical transmission distance is about 470 $km$, whereas the ones of BB84 protocol is lower than 250 $km$.
Quantum Key Distribution, as a branch of quantum mechanics in cryptography, can distribute keys between legal communication parties in an unconditionally secure manner, thus can realize in transmitting confidential information with unconditional security. We consider a Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution protocol with 3-state systems for the first time, where the phase of the coherent state is 3,thus we propose three different ways to response to every successful detection and two parties gain their raw keys by "flip and flip". The simulation results show that compared with Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution protocol where the phase equals 2, the proposed protocol breaks the limit of linear key generation rate in a shorter distance, and the longest practical transmission distance is about 470 km, whereas the ones of BB84 protocol is lower than 250 km.
Abstract The Quantum Key Distribution protocol can encode a single quantum state and implements an information-theoretically secure key distribution protocol in communication. In the actual QKD experimental system, there are usually two encoding methods which are phase encoding and polarization encoding. Ma et al (Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution, Phys. Rev. X., 2018, 83) proposed the phase-matching QKD protocol, which has high transmission and it is an extension of the measurement device independent QKD. This paper successfully gives the polarization scheme of this PM-QKD protocol, the bases in the polarization scheme are arbitrary, and eliminates detector side channel attacks. Furthermore, we give the security analysis and simulation results of the polarization scheme, and compare it with the BB84 protocol. The simulation results show that our protocol is superior to the BB84 protocol in terms of transmission distance under the fixed key rate.
Standard security proofs of quantum-key-distribution (QKD) protocols often rely on symmetry arguments. In this paper, we prove the security of a three-state protocol that does not possess rotational symmetry. The three-state QKD protocol we consider involves three qubit states, where the first two states $\ensuremath{\mid}{0}_{z}⟩$ and $\ensuremath{\mid}{1}_{z}⟩$ can contribute to key generation, and the third state $\ensuremath{\mid}+⟩=(\ensuremath{\mid}{0}_{z}⟩+\ensuremath{\mid}{1}_{z}⟩)∕\sqrt{2}$ is for channel estimation. This protocol has been proposed and implemented experimentally in some frequency-based QKD systems where the three states can be prepared easily. Thus, by founding on the security of this three-state protocol, we prove that these QKD schemes are, in fact, unconditionally secure against any attacks allowed by quantum mechanics. The main task in our proof is to upper bound the phase error rate of the qubits given the bit error rates observed. Unconditional security can then be proved not only for the ideal case of a single-photon source and perfect detectors, but also for the realistic case of a phase-randomized weak coherent light source and imperfect threshold detectors. Our result in the phase error rate upper bound is independent of the loss in the channel. Also, we compare the three-state protocol with the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol. For the single-photon source case, our result proves that the BB84 protocol strictly tolerates a higher quantum bit error rate than the three-state protocol, while for the coherent-source case, the BB84 protocol achieves a higher key generation rate and secure distance than the three-state protocol when a decoy-state method is used.
The phase-matching protocol is a practical and promising protocol that can surpass the linear key generation rate boundary. However, classical phase-matching quantum key distribution requires the channel attenuation between communicating parties to be symmetric. In practice, channels used are often asymmetric, owing to geographical reasons in a quantum key distribution network. To enhance the practicality of phase-matching, this paper proposes an asymmetric phase-matching protocol based on the classical framework and establishes a relevant mathematical simulation model to study the influence of channel asymmetry on its performance. The simulation results show that channel asymmetry significantly affects the count rate, error rate, gain, and quantum bit error rate (QBER), ultimately, system performance. As the channel attenuation difference increases, the system performance decreases and the rate of decrease accelerates. Key generation becomes impossible when the channel attenuation difference exceeds 4 dB. Although the decoy-state scheme cannot change the system's tolerance to channel attenuation difference, when the channel attenuation difference is large, the increasing of the number of decoy states significantly can improve system performance, with a three-decoy-state phase-matching protocol outperforming a two-decoy-state protocol. Considering the limited data length, the system performance is improved as the data length increases, and the tolerance to channel attenuation differences gradually increases. When the data length exceeds 1012, this improvement does not continue any more. The system cannot break through the boundary of linear key generation rate when the channel attenuation difference is 2 dB and the data length is less than 1012. Comparing with symmetric channels, the system performance improvement is very significant under asymmetric channel conditions as the data length increases.
Quantum key distribution provides a promising solution for sharing secure keys between two distant parties with unconditional security. Nevertheless, quantum key distribution is still severely threatened by the imperfections of devices. In particular, the classical pulse correlation threatens security when sending decoy states. To address this problem and simplify experimental requirements, we propose a phase-matching quantum key distribution protocol without intensity modulation. Instead of using decoy states, we propose an alternative method to estimate the theoretical upper bound on the phase error rate contributed by even-photon-number components. Simulation results show that the transmission distance of our protocol could reach 305 km in telecommunication fiber. Furthermore, we perform a proof-of-principle experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of our protocol, and the key rate reaches 22.5 bit/s under a 45-dB channel loss. Addressing the security loophole of pulse intensity correlation and replacing continuous random phase with a six- or eight-slice random phase, our protocol provides a promising solution for constructing quantum networks.
We propose a multiple pulses phase-matching quantum key distribution protocol (MPPM-QKD) to exceed the linear key rate bound and to achieve higher error tolerance. In our protocol, Alice and Bob generate at first their own train pulses (each train should contain L pulses) as well as random bit sequences, and also encode each pulse of their trains with a randomized phase and a modulation phase. As the next step, both encoded trains are simultaneously sent to Charlie, who performs an interference detection and may be also an eavesdropper. After a successful detection is announced by Charlie, Alice and Bob open the randomized phase of each pulse and keep only communications when the summation of the difference randomized phases at two success detection's time-stamps for Alice and Bob are equal to 0 or pi. Thereafter, Alice and Bob compute the sifted key with the time-stamps. The above procedure is repeated until both Alice and Bob achieve sufficiently long sifted keys. We can also show that the secret key rate of the proposed QKD protocol can beat the rate-loss limit of so far known QKD protocols when the transmission distance is greater than 250 km. Moreover, the proposed protocol has a higher error tolerance, approximately 24%, when the transmission distance is 50 km and L = 128. The secret key rate and the transmission distance of our protocol are superior to that of the round-robin differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution protocol [6], and also of the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution protocol [4], and the secret key rate performance is better in both cases than that of phase-matching quantum key distribution when bit train length is greater than 32.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) permits information-theoretically secure transmission of digital encryption keys, assuming that the behaviour of the devices employed for the key exchange can be reliably modelled and predicted. Remarkably, no assumptions have to be made on the capabilities of an eavesdropper other than that she is bounded by the laws of Nature, thus making the security of QKD "unconditional". However, unconditional security is hard to achieve in practice. For example, any experimental realisation can only collect finite data samples, leading to vulnerabilities against coherent attacks, the most general class of attacks, and for some protocols the theoretical proof of robustness against these attacks is still missing. For these reasons, in the past many QKD experiments have fallen short of implementing an unconditionally secure protocol and have instead considered limited attacking capabilities by the eavesdropper. Here, we explore the security of QKD against coherent attacks in the most challenging environment: the long-distance transmission of keys. We demonstrate that the BB84 protocol can provide positive key rates for distances up to 240 km without multiplexing of conventional signals, and up to 200 km with multiplexing. Useful key rates can be achieved even for the longest distances, using practical thermo-electrically cooled single-photon detectors.