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arXiv:2102.10638 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with imperfect sources

Jian-Rong Zhu, Chun-Mei Zhang, Qin Wang

Published Jul 8, 2021• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) can remove all potential detector side-channel attacks and the requirement of real-time alignment of reference frames. However, all previous RFI-MDI-QKD implementations assume the perfect state preparation in sources, which is impractical and may lead to security loopholes. Here, we propose an RFI-MDI-QKD protocol which is robust against state preparation flaws. Comparing to the conventional six-state RFI-MDI-QKD, our scheme can be realized with only four flawed states, which improves the practical security of RFI-MDI-QKD and simplifies the experimental implementation. In addition, simulation results demonstrate that source flaws in Z basis have adverse effect on the performance of RFI-MDI-QKD while the source flaws in X and Y bases have almost no effect. We hope that this work could provide a valuable reference for practical implementations of RFI-MDI-QKD.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6455/ac0c05

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arXiv:2002.03672•Physical Review A•May 11, 2020•35 citations
Abstract Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) can remove all potential detector side-channel attacks and the requirement of real-time alignment of reference frames. However, all previous RFI-MDI-QKD implementations assume the perfect state preparation in sources, which is impractical and may lead to security loopholes. Here, we propose an RFI-MDI-QKD protocol which is robust against state preparation flaws. Comparing to the conventional six-state RFI-MDI-QKD, our scheme can be realized with only four flawed states, which improves the practical security of RFI-MDI-QKD and simplifies the experimental implementation. In addition, simulation results demonstrate that source flaws in Z basis have adverse effect on the performance of RFI-MDI-QKD while the source flaws in X and Y bases have almost no effect. We hope that this work could provide a valuable reference for practical implementations of RFI-MDI-QKD.
Reference frame independent and measurement device independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) has the advantages of being immune to detector side loopholes and misalignment of the reference frame.However, several former related research works are based on the unrealistic assumption of perfect source preparation.In this paper, we merge a loss-tolerant method into RFI-MDI-QKD to consider source flaws into key rate estimation and compare it with quantum coin method.Based on a reliable experimental scheme, the joint influence of both source flaws and reference frame misalignment is discussed with consideration of the finite-key effect.The results show that the loss-tolerant RFI-MDI-QKD protocol can reach longer key rate performance while considering the existence of source flaws in a real-world implementation.
Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) is immune to both detector side channel attacks and slow drifts of reference frames, and thus possesses a high level of security. In the traditional protocol of RFI-MDI-QKD, each legitimate user, Alice or Bob, has to prepare six encoding states in three orthogonal bases (X,YX, YX,Y, and ZZZ), which are sent to the untrusted third party, Charlie. Then all the successful counting events are utilized for parameter estimations, which suffer from a severe finite-size effect. In this paper, we propose a scheme on RFI-MDI-QKD with fewer states and demonstrate that it can be secured and made useful by utilizing semidefinite programming. Numerical simulation results reveal the equivalence between those groups of different monitoring states from Alice and Bob. In addition, when considering practical experimental conditions and taking finite-size effects into account, our proposal can achieve a better performance than the traditional six-state RFI-MDI scheme, which provides a resource-saving and simpler state-preparation approach for practical implementations without sacrificing key rates.
Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) is proposed to remove all possible detector side channel attacks without the alignment of reference frames. Due to unavoidable multiphoton events in practical sources, the decoy-state method is always adopted in real-life QKD systems. Unlike original MDI-QKD (O-MDI-QKD), the characterization on practical decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD is still absent to date. In this paper, we investigate the performance of practical decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD at different misalignments of reference frames with full parameter optimization when considering statistical fluctuations, and provide a clear comparison between decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD and O-MDI-QKD. Simulation results demonstrate that decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD can exhibit performance comparable to that of O-MDI-QKD in practical scenarios, which is very robust in QKD systems.
Reference-frame-independent measurement-deviceindependent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) can eschew the alignment of reference frames in practical systems and defeat all potential detector side channel attacks. Here, we propose the decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD protocol with biased bases. In this protocol, two legitimate parties Alice and Bob prepare signal states in Z, X, and Y bases and decoy states in X and Y bases, which avoids the futility in Z basis for decoy states and simplifies the operation of existing systems. Considering the security against coherent attacks with statistical fluctuations, we investigate the performance of the decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD protocol with biased bases in the environment of unknown and slowly drifting reference frames and make comparisons with the original decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD protocol under the same conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can increase the achievable secret key rate and transmission distance obviously compared with the original protocol, which is very promising in real-life QKD systems.
Compared with the traditional protocols of quantum key distribution (QKD), the reference-frame-independent (RFI)--QKD protocol has been generally proved to be very useful and practical, since its experimental implementation can be simplified without the alignment of a reference frame. In most RFI-QKD systems, the encoding states are always taken to be perfect, which, however, is not practical in realizations. In this paper, we consider the security of RFI QKD with source flaws based on the loss-tolerant method proposed by Tamaki et al. [Phys. Rev. A 90, 052314 (2014)]. As the six-state protocol can be realized with four states, we show that the RFI-QKD protocol can also be performed with only four encoding states instead of six encoding states in its standard version. Furthermore, the numerical simulation results show that the source flaws in the key-generation basis (Z(Z(Z basis) will reduce the key rate but are loss tolerant, while the ones in XXX and YYY bases almost have no effect and the key rate remains almost the same even when they are very large. Hence, our method and results will have important significance in practical experiments, especially in earth-to-satellite or chip-to-chip quantum communications.
Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-MDI-QKD) is a novel protocol that eliminates all possible attacks on the detector side and the necessity of reference-frame alignment in source sides. However, its performance may degrade notably due to statistical fluctuations since more parameters, e.g., yields and error rates for mismatched-basis events, must be accumulated to monitor the security. In this work, we find that the original decoy states method estimates these yields overpessimistically since it ignores the potential relations between different bases. Through jointly processing parameters of different bases, the performance of RFI-MDI-QKD is greatly improved in terms of the secret key rate and achievable distance when statistical fluctuations are considered (the statistical fluctuation analysis is the first step to the final analysis of the finite key size effect). Our results pave an avenue towards practical RFI-MDI-QKD.