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Chinese Physics B

Passive decoy state SARG04 quantum-key-distribution with practical photon-number resolving detectors

Fang-Xing Xu, Shuang Wang, Zheng‐Fu Han, Guo Guang-Can

Published Oct 1, 2010• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

SARG04 protocol has its advantages in defending photon number splitting attack, benefited from two-photon pulses part. In this paper, we present a passive decoy state SARG04 scheme combining with practical photon number resolving (PNR) detectors. Two kinds of practical detectors, transition-edge sensor and time-multiplexing detector, are taken into consideration. Theoretical analysis shows that both of them are compatible with the passive decoy state SARG04. Compared with the original SARG04, two detectors can boost the key generation rate and maximal secure distance obviously. Meanwhile, the result shows that quantum efficiency and dark count of the detector influence the maximal distance slightly, which indicates the prospect of implementation in real quantum key distribution system with imperfect practical PNS detectors.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/19/10/100312

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SARG04 protocol has its advantages in defending photon number splitting attack, benefited from two-photon pulses part. In this paper, we present a passive decoy state SARG04 scheme combining with practical photon number resolving (PNR) detectors. Two kinds of practical detectors, transition-edge sensor and time-multiplexing detector, are taken into consideration. Theoretical analysis shows that both of them are compatible with the passive decoy state SARG04. Compared with the original SARG04, two detectors can boost the key generation rate and maximal secure distance obviously. Meanwhile, the result shows that quantum efficiency and dark count of the detector influence the maximal distance slightly, which indicates the prospect of implementation in real quantum key distribution system with imperfect practical PNS detectors.
We present a new scheme for realizing passive decoy-state quantum key distribution with the SARG04 protocol. It is based on parametric down-conversion sources, and we do not need to modulate the pumping light into different intensities. By applying local-mode-splitting detections on Alice’s side, legitimate users can obtain four different kinds of counting events on Bob’s side, due to intrinsic correlations between photon pairs from parametric down-conversion processes. In the new scheme, we do not need to modulate signal pulses into different intensities and can, thus, avoid introducing any intensity modulating uncertainty. As a result, quite precise estimations of single- or multi-photon-pulse contributions can be obtained, enabling better performance of the key generation rate and transmission distance compared with other existing SARG04 protocols, e.g., the four-intensity decoy-state method using either parametric down-conversion sources or weak coherent sources. Besides, through comparisons, we also find that the proposed new passive decoy-state SARG04 protocol can also show some superiority over the conventional three-intensity decoy-state BB84 protocol at long transmission distances under certain experimental conditions.
A passive scheme with a photon-number-resolving detector and a beam splitter which are used to monitor the statistical characteristics of photon source, is proposed to verify the security of three-intensity decoy-state quantum key distribution system with an untrusted source. The practical issues due to statistical fluctuation and detection noise are analyzed. The simulation results show that the scheme can work efficiently when the data size N≥108N\ge10^{8}N≥108 and the dark count rate of the detector is below 0.5 counts/pulse, which are realizable by current techniques. We also give an experimental example of PNR detector which is easily realized by a variable optical attenuator combined with a practical threshold detector.
We propose a scheme of BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) with a triggered parametric down-conversion (PDC) source. According to different results of Alice's measurement using a photon number resolving (PNR) detector, we separate photon pulses into three sets to implement the passive decoy method. Performances of two different kinds of widely-used PNR detectors, TES and TMD, are investigated by simulation. With the parameters of PNR detectors nowadays, TES and TMD perform similarly. Both of them can improve the secure transmission distance up to 171 km. Furthermore, compared with the case using threshold detectors, this scheme can achieve a higher key generation rate.
The passive decoy scheme represents a quantum key distribution protocol that employs a photon number resolving detector to selectively extract the decoy states from the signal states during post-processing. This selection process ensures resilience against attacks capable of distinguishing between these two states, thereby enhancing the security of the protocol. Previous research has emphasized the good performance of the protocol under optimal conditions. However, our study focuses on numerically evaluating the protocol performance in various practical scenarios. We aim to understand the implications of these scenarios in terms of the maximum attainable attenuation and bit rate per second, considering the number of photons per pulse sent under specific experimental conditions. Our findings demonstrate that opting for a low average photon number value ensures high tolerance to attenuation during communication, albeit at the cost of a reduced bit rate per second. Conversely, for lower attenuations, it is more advantageous to increase the average number of photons, even if it deviates from the ideal behaviour of a single-photon source. The benefit of selecting the decoy states at the end of the transmission remains consistent across different configurations. This research signifies an advancement in assessing the viability of incorporating the protocol within a practical QKD network.
Combining the passive decoy-state idea with the active decoy-state idea, a non-orthogonal (SARG04) decoy-state protocol with one vacuum and two weak decoy states is introduced based on a heralded pair coherent state photon source for quantum key distribution. Two special cases of this protocol are deduced, i.e., a one-vacuum-and-one-weak-decoy-state protocol and a one-weak-decoy-state protocol. In these protocols, the sender prepares decoy states actively, which avoids the crude estimation of parameters in the SARG04 passive decoy-state method. With the passive decoy-state idea, the detection events on Bob's side that are non-triggered on Alice's side are not discarded, but used to estimate the fractions of single-photon and two-photon pulses, which offsets the limitation of the detector's low efficiency and overcomes the shortcoming that the performance of the active decoy-state protocol critically depends on the efficiency of detector. The simulation results show that the combination of the active and passive decoy-state ideas increases the key generation rate. With a one-vacuum-and-two-weak-decoy-state protocol, one can achieve a key generation rate that is close to the theoretical limit of an infinite decoy-state protocol. The performance of the other two protocols is a little less than with the former, but the implementation is easier. Under the same condition of implementation, higher key rates can be obtained with our protocols than with existing methods.
Abstract The SARG04 quantum key distribution protocol can offer greater robustness against photon number splitting attacks than the BB84 protocol that is implemented with weak pulses. In this paper, we propose a tight key analysis for the SARG04 protocol, by considering the one-decoy method and investigating its performance under the influence of a detector afterpulse. Our results demonstrate that an increase in block size leads to a slight increase in both the secure key rate and the maximum transmission distance. Importantly, the detector afterpulse plays a crucial role in practical applications and has a more pronounced effect on the SARG04 protocol compared to the BB84 protocol.