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arXiv:2212.06148 · Physical Review Research

Breaking the rate-distance limitation of measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing

Chen-Long Li, Yao Fu, Wen‐Bo Liu, Yuan-Mei Xie, Bing-Hong Li, Min-Gang Zhou, Hua‐Lei Yin, Zeng‐Bing Chen

Published Aug 4, 2023• 43 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Currently most progress on quantum secret sharing suffers from rate-distance bound, and thus the key rates are limited. In addition to the limited key rate, the technical difficulty and the corresponding cost together prevent large-scale deployment. Furthermore, the performance of most existing protocols is analyzed in the asymptotic regime without considering participant attacks. Here we report a measurement-device-independent quantum secret-sharing protocol with improved key rate and transmission distance. Based on spatial multiplexing, our protocol shows it can break rate-distance bounds over network under at least ten communication parties. Compared with other protocols, our work improves the secret key rate by more than two orders of magnitude and has a longer transmission distance. We analyze the security of our protocol in the composable framework considering participant attacks and evaluate its performance in the finite-size regime. In addition, we investigate applying our protocol to digital signatures where the signature rate is improved more than ${10}^{7}$ times compared with existing protocols. We anticipate that our quantum secret-sharing protocol will provide a solid future for multiparty applications on the quantum network.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.5.033077

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Currently most progress on quantum secret sharing suffers from rate-distance bound, and thus the key rates are limited. In addition to the limited key rate, the technical difficulty and the corresponding cost together prevent large-scale deployment. Furthermore, the performance of most existing protocols is analyzed in the asymptotic regime without considering participant attacks. Here we report a measurement-device-independent quantum secret-sharing protocol with improved key rate and transmission distance. Based on spatial multiplexing, our protocol shows it can break rate-distance bounds over network under at least ten communication parties. Compared with other protocols, our work improves the secret key rate by more than two orders of magnitude and has a longer transmission distance. We analyze the security of our protocol in the composable framework considering participant attacks and evaluate its performance in the finite-size regime. In addition, we investigate applying our protocol to digital signatures where the signature rate is improved more than 107{10}^{7}107 times compared with existing protocols. We anticipate that our quantum secret-sharing protocol will provide a solid future for multiparty applications on the quantum network.
Abstract Quantum conference key agreement is an important cryptographic primitive for future quantum network. Realizing this primitive requires high-brightness and robust multiphoton entanglement sources, which is challenging in experiment and unpractical in application because of limited transmission distance caused by channel loss. Here we report a measurement-device-independent quantum conference key agreement protocol with enhanced transmission efficiency over lossy channel. With spatial multiplexing nature and adaptive operation, our protocol can break key rate bounds on quantum communication over quantum network without quantum memory. Compared with previous work, our protocol shows superiority in key rate and transmission distance within the state-of-the-art technology. Furthermore, we analyse the security of our protocol in the composable framework and evaluate its performance in the finite-size regime to show practicality. Based on our results, we anticipate that our protocol will play an important role in constructing multipartite quantum network.
Device-independent quantum secret sharing (DI QSS) relaxes security assumptions of experimental devices to provide the highest security level for QSS. Previous DI QSS protocols require to generate multi-partite entangled states and then implement the long-distance entanglement distribution. The extremely low generation probability of current multi-partite entanglement source and photon transmission loss largely limit DI QSS's practical key generation rate and secure photon transmission distance. In the paper, we propose a high-efficient long-distance DI QSS protocol based on practical nearly on-demand single-photon sources (SPSs), which adopts the single photons and heralded architecture to construct long-distance multi-partite entanglement channels. Our SPS DI QSS protocol can automatically eliminate the negative influence from photon transmission loss and largely increase the secure photon transmission distance. Moreover, we adopt active improvement strategies such as random key generation basis, postselection, and advanced postselection to further increase the practical key generation rate and lower the experimental requirement. Comparing with previous DI QSS protocols based on entanglement sources, our SPS DI QSS protocol can increase the practical communication efficiency by six orders of magnitude, and increase the secure photon transmission distance by at least 151 times. This SPS DI QSS protocol is feasible with the current experimental technologies. Our protocol makes it possible to realize high-efficient long-distance DI network in the near future.
Future quantum communication networks will conceivably support cryptographic tasks that require entanglement among more than two users. Quantum secret sharing is a prime example where entanglement provides a direct means to coordinate untrusted parties with security from eavesdropping in a multi-party setting. However, the canonical GHZ-based protocols can be vulnerable to participant attacks, in which untrusted parties try to learn the secret without collaborating. Here, we experimentally evaluate a discrete-variable (n,n)(n,n)(n,n)-threshold quantum secret-sharing protocol whose finite-key analysis provides composable security against general attacks, including participant attacks. Using two domain-engineered entangled photon pair sources, we generate 4-qubit GHZ states at rates above 5×1035\times10^35×103 fourfold events per second and a maximum asymptotic secret key rate of 750±10750 \pm 10750±10 bits per second. We then distribute the state through a 4-arm star network comprising 20km of fibre in total. From the measured event rates and error statistics, we infer that a randomised 24-hour execution with the optimised basis probability would yield a composable finite-key lower bound of 8.7 Mbits, under the assumption that the measured source and device statistics remain stationary.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing has many important applications in quantum communication and secure multiparty computing. In this work, a novel measurement‐device‐independent protocol for three‐party quantum secret sharing is put forward, in which the dealer and two sharers are required to prepare Greenberger‐Horne‐Zeilinger states and single particles, respectively, but they only need to perform single‐particle measurement. As a result, this protocol is feasible in experiments by using current technologies. More importantly, it can extend the spatial distance among three participants for quantum state transmissions at least 15.47% compared to the previous protocols.
The large-scale deployment of quantum secret sharing (QSS) in quantum networks is currently challenging due to the requirements for the generation and distribution of multipartite entanglement states. Here we present an efficient source-independent QSS protocol utilizing entangled photon pairs in quantum networks. Through the post-matching method, which means the measurement events in the same basis are matched, the key rate is almost independent of the number of participants. In addition, the unconditional security of our QSS against internal and external eavesdroppers can be proved by introducing an equivalent virtual protocol. Our protocol has great performance and technical advantages in future quantum networks.
Abstract Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a fundamental primitive of quantum network that enables multiple parties to securely share secret keys. Device-independent (DI) QSS offers the highest security by removing the assumptions on all experimental devices. However, the photon transmission loss and quantum state decoherence largely limit DI QSS’s secure photon transmission distance and experimental demonstration. For resisting above two obstacles, in this work, we propose a new DI QSS protocol that integrates two passive improvement strategies, the noiseless linear amplification (NLA) and entanglement purification. These passive strategies can completely eliminate the influence from photon transmission loss and improve entanglement distribution quality. In this way, DI QSS’s secure photon transmission distance can be extended to infinity in theory and its noise robustness can be largely enhanced (The threshold of the initial fidelity can be reduced from 85.71% to 65.75%). The NLA and EPP are based on linear optical elements, ensuring their experimental feasibility. We also introduce active improvement strategies in this DI QSS protocol, which can reduce its requirements on local experimental devices and further increase its noise robustness. The fidelity threshold can be further reduced to 59.73%. Our DI QSS protocol provides a possible solution for constructing DI multi-party long-distance quantum network.