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arXiv:2505.10797

High-efficient long-distance device-independent quantum secret sharing based on single-photon sources

Qi Zhang, Cheng Zhang, Wei Zhong, Ming‐Ming Du, Lan Zhou, Yu‐Bo Sheng

Published May 16, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2505.10797

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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.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) plays a critical role in building the distributed quantum networks. Device-independent (DI) QSS provides the highest security level for QSS. However, the photon transmission loss and extremely low multipartite entanglement generation rate largely limit DI QSS's secure photon transmission distance (less than 1 km) and practical key generation efficiency. To address the above-mentioned drawbacks, we propose the quantum memory-assisted (QMA) DI QSS protocol based on single-photon sources (SPSs). The single photons from the SPSs are used to construct long-distance multipartite entanglement channels with the help of the heralded architecture. The heralded architecture enables our protocol to have an infinite secure photon transmission distance in theory. The QMA technology can not only increase the multi-photon synchronization efficiency but also optimize the photon transmittance to maximize the construction efficiency of the multipartite entanglement channels. Our protocol achieves the practical key generation efficiency seven orders of magnitude higher than that of the existing DI QSS protocols based on cascaded spontaneous parametric downconversion sources and six orders of magnitude higher than that of the DI QSS based on SPSs without QMA. Our protocol has modular characteristics and is feasible under the current experimental technical conditions. Combining with the advanced random key generation basis strategy, the requirement on experimental devices can be effectively reduced. Our protocol is expected to promote the development of long-distance and high-efficiency DI quantum network in the future.
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.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) enables a dealer to securely distribute keys to multiple players. Device-independent (DI) QSS can resist all possible attacks from practical imperfect devices and provide QSS the highest level of security in theory. However, DI QSS requires high-performance devices, especially for low-noise channels, which is a big challenge to demonstrate experimentally. We propose a DI QSS protocol with the advanced random key generation basis strategy, which combines the random key generation basis with the noise preprocessing and postselection strategies. We develop the methods to numerically simulate the key generation rate in an acceptable time. Our DI QSS protocol has some advantages. First, it can increase the noise tolerance threshold from an initial 7.147% to 9.231% (29.16% growth) and reduce the global detection efficiency threshold from 96.32% to 93.41%. The maximal distance between any two users increases to 1.43 km, which is about 5.5 times the initial value. Second, by randomly selecting two basis combinations to generate the key, our DI QSS protocol can reduce the entanglement resource consumption. Our protocol has potential for the experimental demonstration of DI QSS and application in the future.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can directly transmit secrete messages through a quantum channel. Device-independent (DI) QSDC can guarantee the communication security relying only on the observation of the Bell-inequality violation, but not on any detailed description or trust of the inner workings of users' devices. In the paper, we propose a DI-QSDC protocol with practical highly efficient single-photon sources. The communication parties construct the entanglement channel from single photons by adopting the heralded architecture, which makes the message-leakage rate independent of the photon-transmission loss. The secure communication distance and the practical communication efficiency of the current DI-QSDC protocol are about 6 times and 600 times of those in the original DI-QSDC protocol. Combining with the entanglement purification, the parties can construct the nearly perfect entanglement channel and completely eliminate the message leakage. This DI-QSDC protocol may have useful applications in the future quantum communication field.
Measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing (MDI-QSS) can resist all attacks on imperfect measuring devices. However, limited by the exponential increase in fiber loss, MDI-QSS has a low key rate and short communication distance. In this paper, we introduce quantum memory (QM) in MDI-QSS to increase the success probability of the three-photon synchronous projection measurement and propose a memory-assisted (MA) MDI-QSS protocol. In this protocol, the heralded single-photon source and the decoy-state method are also explored. This MA-MDI-QSS protocol has three advantages. First, the QM used here is all optical, and this protocol is feasible under current experimental conditions. Second, combined with the decoy-state method, our protocol can guarantee the security of the transmitted keys under practical experimental conditions. Third, numerical simulation results show that our protocol has a higher secure key rate and longer photon transmission distance than existing MDI-QSS protocols without QM. Our protocol provides a promising way for implementing the long-distance MDI-QSS in the near future.
Device-independent (DI) quantum secret sharing (QSS) can relax the security assumptions about the devices' internal workings and provide QSS the highest level of security in theory. The original DI QSS protocol proved its correctness and completeness under a causal independence assumption regarding measurement devices. However, there has been a lack of DI QSS's performance characterization in practical communication situations, which impedes its experimental demonstration and application in the future. Here we propose a three-partite DI QSS protocol with noise preprocessing and postselection strategies and develop the numerical methods to implement its performance characterization in practical communication situations. The adoption of the noise preprocessing and postselection can reduce DI QSS's global detection efficiency threshold from 96.32% to 94.30% and increase the noise threshold from 7.148% to 8.072%. Our DI QSS protocol has two advantages. First, it is a DI QSS protocol with performance characterization in practical communication situations. Second, the adoption of noise preprocessing and postselection can effectively relax its experimental requirement and enhance the noise resistance. Our DI QSS protocol has potential for future experimental demonstration and application.