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Quantum Information Processing

An improved control mode for the ping-pong protocol operation in imperfect quantum channels

Piotr Zawadzki

Published Apr 20, 2015• 9 citations

Abstract

Quantum direct communication (QDC) can bring confidentiality of sensitive information without any encryption. A ping-pong protocol, a well-known example of entanglement-based QDC, offers asymptotic security in a perfect quantum channel. However, it has been shown (Wójcik in Phys Rev Lett 90(15):157901, 2003. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.157901 ) that it is not secure in the presence of losses. Moreover, legitimate parities cannot rely on dense information coding due to possible undetectable eavesdropping even in the perfect setting (Pavičić in Phys Rev A 87(4):042326, 2013. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevA.87.042326 ). We have identified the source of the above-mentioned weaknesses in the incomplete check of the EPR pair coherence. We propose an improved version of the control mode, and we discuss its relation to the already-known attacks that undermine the QDC security. It follows that the new control mode detects these attacks with high probability and independently on a quantum channel type. As a result, an asymptotic security of the QDC communication can be maintained for imperfect quantum channels, also in the regime of dense information coding.

DOI: 10.1007/s11128-015-0989-x

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Quantum secure direct communication protocols offer confidential transmission of classic information over the quantum channel without a prior key agreement. The ping-pong based protocols provide asymptotic security and detailed analysis of the security level provided by each variant of the protocol is required. The paper presents a general method of calculation of the eavesdropped information as a function of the attack detection probability. The method is applied to the ping-pong protocol based on completely entangled pairs of qudits. The lower and upper bound on the amount of the leaked information is provided.

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A scheme for deterministic secure direct communication based on ping-pong protocol without restricting the security control only to a distinct control mode and debate via classical channel is proposed. It utilizes an entangled pair of qubits and presents a higher bit-rate transfer of information together with a higher security than ping-pong protocol. The security of protocol is enhanced by introducing a control factor for each message mode. It is explicitly showed that the protocol has a high degree of security against a class of individual attacks, and successfully resolves the famous Wojcik attack.