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Experimental Demonstration of Secure Communication based on Quantum Illumination

Zheshen Zhang, Maria Tengner, Tian Zhong, Franco N. C. Wong, Jeffrey H. Shapiro

Published Jan 1, 2013• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract: We report the first experimental demonstration of an entanglement-based secure communication protocol that is resilient to entanglement-breaking loss and noise on the communication channel. Passive eavesdropping immunity is demonstrated in bit-error rate measurements and Alice’s information advantage over Eve is estimated. Entanglement is a key ingredient to many quantum information applications, but quantum decoherence arising from loss and noise easily destroys entanglement. Quantum illumination (QI) [1]–[3] is a novel concept of utilizing entanglement in an entanglement-breaking lossy and noisy environment to achieve a substantial performance benefit. First proposed for enhancing the signalto-noise ratio for detecting a weakly-reflecting target in the presence of strong background noise [1], quantum illumination was later shown, theoretically, to enable high data-rate classical communication that is immune to passive eavesdropping [3]. In this work we report the first experimental demonstration of the QI communication protocol [4], showing a strong performance benefit of using bosonic entanglement over an entanglement-breaking channel and QI’s passive-eavesdropping immunity. Quantum illumination achieves a substantial benefit from its initial entanglement, despite the roundtrip lossy, noisy propagation channel’s having left the retained and returned light

DOI
10.1364/cleo_qels.2013.qtu2c.7

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Abstract: We report the first experimental demonstration of an entanglement-based secure communication protocol that is resilient to entanglement-breaking loss and noise on the communication channel. Passive eavesdropping immunity is demonstrated in bit-error rate measurements and Alice’s information advantage over Eve is estimated. Entanglement is a key ingredient to many quantum information applications, but quantum decoherence arising from loss and noise easily destroys entanglement. Quantum illumination (QI) [1]–[3] is a novel concept of utilizing entanglement in an entanglement-breaking lossy and noisy environment to achieve a substantial performance benefit. First proposed for enhancing the signalto-noise ratio for detecting a weakly-reflecting target in the presence of strong background noise [1], quantum illumination was later shown, theoretically, to enable high data-rate classical communication that is immune to passive eavesdropping [3]. In this work we report the first experimental demonstration of the QI communication protocol [4], showing a strong performance benefit of using bosonic entanglement over an entanglement-breaking channel and QI’s passive-eavesdropping immunity. Quantum illumination achieves a substantial benefit from its initial entanglement, despite the roundtrip lossy, noisy propagation channel’s having left the retained and returned light
Entanglement is essential to many quantum information applications, but it is easily destroyed by quantum decoherence arising from interaction with the environment. We report the first experimental demonstration of an entanglement-based protocol that is resilient to loss and noise which destroy entanglement. Specifically, despite channel noise 8.3 dB beyond the threshold for entanglement breaking, eavesdropping-immune communication is achieved between Alice and Bob when an entangled source is used, but no such immunity is obtainable when their source is classical. The results prove that entanglement can be utilized beneficially in lossy and noisy situations, i.e., in practical scenarios.
Quantum illumination is a paradigm for using entanglement to gain a performance advantage-in comparison with classical-state systems of the same optical power-over lossy, noisy channels that destroy entanglement. Previous work has shown how it can be used to defeat passive eavesdropping on a two-way Alice-to-Bob-to-Alice communication protocol, in which the eavesdropper, Eve, merely listens to Alice and Bob's transmissions. This thesis extends that work in several ways. First, it derives a lower bound on information advantage that Alice enjoys over Eve in the passive eavesdropping scenario. Next, it explores the performance of alternative practical receivers for Alice, as well as various high-order modulation formats for the passive eavesdropping case. Finally, this thesis extends previous analysis to consider how Alice and Bob can minimize their vulnerability to Eve's doing active eavesdropping, i.e., when she injects her own light into the channel.
Quantum illumination is a paradigm for using entanglement to gain a performance advantage—in comparison with classical‐state systems of the same optical power—over lossy, noisy channels that destroy entanglement. Previous work has shown how it can be used to defeat passive eavesdropping on a two‐way Alice‐to‐Bob‐to‐Alice communication protocol, in which the eavesdropper, Eve, merely listens to Alice and Bob’s transmissions. This paper extends that analysis to consider how Alice and Bob can minimize their vulnerability to Eve’s doing active eavesdropping, i.e., when she injects her own light into the channel.
A new paradigm for secure communication, based on quantum illumination, is proposed. Alice uses spontaneous parametric down-conversion to send Bob a set of signal modes over a pure-loss channel while retaining the set of idler modes with which they are maximally entangled. Bob imposes a single information bit on the modes he receives from Alice via binary phase-shift keying. He then adds classical Gaussian noise and sends the noisy modulated modes back to Alice over the same pure-loss channel. Even though the loss and noise destroy any entanglement between the modes that Alice receives from Bob and the idler modes she has retained, she can decode Bob's bit with an error probability that can be orders of magnitude lower than what is achieved by a passive eavesdropper who receives all the photons that are lost en route from Alice to Bob and from Bob to Alice.
A two-way protocol for defeating passive eavesdropping is proposed. For each information bit, Alice sends Bob TTT sec of signal-beam output from a spontaneous parametric down-converter over a pure-loss channel while retaining the idler beam with which it is maximally entangled. Bob imposes a single information bit on the light he receives from Alice via binary phase-shift keying. He then amplifies the modulated beam and sends the resulting light back to Alice over the same pure-loss channel. Even though the loss and amplifier noise destroy any entanglement between the light that Alice receives from Bob and the idler she has retained, she can decode Bob's bit with an error probability that can be orders of magnitude lower than what is achieved by a passive eavesdropper who receives all the photons that are lost en route from Alice to Bob and from Bob to Alice. In particular, Alice and Bob can communicate at 50 Mbit/s over 50 km of low-loss fiber with an error probability of less than ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}$ while the passive eavesdropper's error probability must exceed 0.28.
Entanglement underpins a variety of quantum-enhanced communication, sensing, and computing capabilities. Entanglement-assisted communication (EACOMM) leverages entanglement preshared by communicating parties to boost the rate of classical information transmission. Pioneering theory works showed that EACOMM can enable a communication rate well beyond the ultimate classical capacity of optical communications, but an experimental demonstration of any EACOMM advantage remains elusive. In this Letter we report the implementation of EACOMM surpassing the classical capacity over lossy and noisy bosonic channels. We construct a high-efficiency entanglement source and a phase-conjugate quantum receiver to reap the benefit of preshared entanglement, despite entanglement being broken by channel loss and noise. We show that EACOMM beats the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland capacity of classical communication by up to 16.3%, when both protocols are subject to the same power constraint at the transmitter. As a practical performance benchmark, we implement a classical communication protocol with the identical characteristics for the encoded signal, showing that EACOMM can reduce the bit-error rate by up to 69% over the same bosonic channel. Our work opens a route to provable quantum advantages in a wide range of quantum information processing tasks.