International Journal of Quantum Information
DISCRETELY MODULATED CONTINUOUS-VARIABLE QUANTUM KEY DISTRIBUTION WITH A NONDETERMINISTIC NOISELESS AMPLIFIER
JIAN FANG, YUAN LU, Peng Huang, Guangqiang He, Guihua Zeng
Abstract
In this paper, we first study a generalized protocol of discrete modulation for continuous-variable quantum key distribution with N coherent states in a Gaussian lossy and noisy channel and investigate its performance against collective attacks. We find that discrete modulation protocols with more than eight states do not perform better than the eight-state protocol. Then, we study the improvement of this protocol by using a nondeterministic noiseless linear amplifier (NLA) on Bob's detection stage. Results indicate that a NLA with gain g can extend the maximum transmission distance by 50 log10g2km and can increase the maximal tolerable excess noise. With the reconciliation efficiency β, we find the gain of NLA has a maximal value defined as gmaxand by adjusting the gain to about βgmaxone can have the best improvement on secret key rate.