A theoretical scheme for quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is proposed, where a three-qubit symmetric W state functions as a quantum channel. Two legitimate communicators can transmit their secret information by using quantum teleportation and local measurements.
A theoretical scheme for alternative and secure direct communication is proposed. The communication is based on controlled quantum teleportation via state. After insuring the security of the quantum channels (a set of qubits in the states), Alice encodes the secret messages directly on a sequence of particle states and transmits them to Bob supported by Charlie, or to Charlie supported by Bob, using controlled quantum teleportation. Bob or Charlie can read out the encoded messages directly by the measurement on his qubits. In this scheme, the controlled quantum teleportation transmits Alice's message without revealing any information to a potential eavesdropper. Because there is no a transmission of the qubits carrying the secret messages between legitimate parties in the public channel, it is completely secure for direct secret communication if perfect quantum channel is used. We also discuss that when one of the three legitimate parties does not cooperate with others because of some reasons, the remaining two persons can still communicate with each other by entanglement purification. The main feature of this scheme is that the communicate between two sides is alternative but depends on the agreement of the third, and more over, the communication between two sides does not suspend with loss of one of three qubits ( i.e., one of the three legitimate parties does not cooperate with others).
A new theoretical scheme for quantum secure direct communication is proposed, where four-qubit symmetric W state functions as quantum channel. It is shown that two legitimate users can directly transmit the secret messages by using Bell-basis measurements and classical communication. The scheme is completely secure if the quantum channel is perfect. Even if the quantum channel is unsecured, it is still possible for two users to perform their secure communication. One bit secret message can be transmitted by sending a bit classical information.
A theoretical scheme for controlled and secure direct communication is proposed. The communication is based on GHZ state and controlled quantum teleportation. After insuring the security of the quantum channel (a set of qubits in the GHZ state), Alice encodes the secret message directly on a sequence of particle states in the GHZ state and transmits them to Bob, supervised by Charlie using controlled quantum teleportation. Bob can read out the encoded messages directly by the measurement on his qubits. In this scheme, the controlled quantum teleportation transmits Alice’s message without revealing any information to a potential eavesdropper. Because there is not a transmission of the qubit carrying the secret messages between Alice and Bob in the public channel, it is completely secure for controlled and direct secret communication if a perfect quantum channel is used. The feature of this scheme is that the communication between two sides depends on the agreement of a third side.
Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is one of the most important branches of quantum communication. In contrast to the quantum key distribution (QKD) which distributes a secure key between distant parties, QSDC directly transmits secret message instead of sharing key in advance. To establish a secure QSDC protocol, on the one hand, the security of the quantum channel should be confirmed before the exchange of the secret message. On the other hand, the quantum state should be transmitted in a quantum data block since the security of QSDC is based on the error rate analysis in the theories on statistics. Compared with the deterministic quantum key distribution (DQKD) which can also be used to transmit deterministic information, QSDC schemes do not need extra classical bits to read the secret message except for public discussion. In this article, we introduce the basic principles of QSDC and review the development in this field by introducing typical QSDC protocols chronologically. The first QSDC protocol was proposed by Long and Liu, which can be used to establish a common key between distant parties. In their scheme, the method for transmitting quantum states in a block by block way and in multiple steps was proposed and the information leakage before eavesdropping detection was solved. Subsequently, Deng et al. presented two pioneering QSDC schemes, an entangled-state-based two-step QSDC scheme and a single-photon-state-based quantum one-time pad scheme, in which the basic principle and criteria for QSDC were pointed out. From then on, many interesting QSDC schemes have been proposed, including the high-dimension QSDC scheme based on quantum superdense coding, multi-step QSDC scheme based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, QSDC scheme based on quantum encryption with practical non-maximally entangled quantum channel, and so on. We also introduce the anti-noise QSDC schemes which were designed for coping with the collective-dephasing noise and the collective-rotation noise, respectively. In 2011, Wang et al. presented the first QSDC which exploited the hyperentangled state as the information carrier and several QSDC schemes based on the spatial degree of freedom (DOF) of photon, single-photon multi-DOF state and hyperentanglement were proposed subsequently. In addition to the point-to-point QSDC schemes, we also review the QSDC networks. Finally, a perspective of QSDC research is given in the last section.