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Physical Review A

Quantum key distribution with the single-photon-added coherent source

Dong Wang, Mo Li, Feng Zhu, Zhen−Qiang Yin, Wei Chen, Zheng‐Fu Han, Guang‐Can Guo, Qin Wang

Published Dec 8, 2014• 55 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we present schemes on implementing the single-photon-added coherent source in quantum key distributions. We apply this source in either the standard BB84 protocol or the recently proposed measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution, comparing their performance with the cases of using other existing sources, e.g., the weak coherent source or the heralded single-photon source, and giving out corresponding numerical simulations. Our simulation results show that in both protocols the single-photon-added coherent source can greatly exceed all other existing sources. Moreover, even when taking statistical fluctuation into account, a high key generation rate can still be achieved at long distance by applying this source.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.90.062315

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In this paper, we present schemes on implementing the single-photon-added coherent source in quantum key distributions. We apply this source in either the standard BB84 protocol or the recently proposed measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution, comparing their performance with the cases of using other existing sources, e.g., the weak coherent source or the heralded single-photon source, and giving out corresponding numerical simulations. Our simulation results show that in both protocols the single-photon-added coherent source can greatly exceed all other existing sources. Moreover, even when taking statistical fluctuation into account, a high key generation rate can still be achieved at long distance by applying this source.
We present a scheme for the practical decoy-state quantum key distribution with heralded single-photon source. In this scheme, only two-intensity decoy states are employed. However, its performance can approach the asymptotic case of using infinite decoy states. We compare it with the standard three-intensity decoy-state method, and through numerical simulations, we demonstrate its significant improvement over the three-intensity method in both the final key rate and the secure transmission distance. Furthermore, when taking statistical fluctuations into account, a very high key generation rate can still be obtained even at a long transmission distance.
Quantum key distribution involving decoy-states is a significant application of quantum information. By using three-intensity decoy-states of single-photon-added coherent sources, we propose a practically realizable scheme on quantum key distribution which approaches very closely the ideal asymptotic case of an infinite number of decoy-states. We make a comparative study between this scheme and two other existing ones, i.e., two-intensity decoy-states with single-photon-added coherent sources, and three-intensity decoy-states with weak coherent sources. Through numerical analysis, we demonstrate the advantages of our scheme in secure transmission distance and the final key generation rate.
In this paper, we mainly introduce the preparation and physical properties of the heralded single-photon source, the development history and its applications in three typical quantum key distribution protocols, including BB84, measurement-device-independent and twin-field quantum key distribution protocols. Moreover, we make comparisons of the above quantum key distribution protocols between using heralded single-photon source and using weak coherent sources, and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Besides, according to the characteristics of single-photon interference in twin-field quantum key distributions, the limitations of separately applying heralded single-photon sources to twin-field quantum key distributions are revealed, and possible solutions are discussed. Therefore, this work may provide valuable references and help for the practical implementation of quantum secure communication in the near future.
We study decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution using heralded single-photon sources. This has the advantage that the observed error rate in the XXX basis is at higher order and not so large. We calculate the key rate and transmission distance for two cases: one using only triggered events, and the other using both triggered and nontriggered events. We compare the key rates of various protocols and find that our scheme using triggered and nontriggered events can give a higher key rate and a longer secure distance. Moreover, we also show the different behavior of our scheme when using different heralded single-photon sources, i.e., in Poisson or thermal distributions. We demonstrate that the former can generate a higher secure key rate than the latter and can thus work more efficiently in practical quantum key distributions.
The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) is based on the basic principles of quantum mechanics, and therefore has unconditional security in theory. In existing quantum key distribution systems, weakly coherent sources (WCSs) are often used as light sources due to a high probability of vacuum pulses in these sources, resulting in limited transmission distances. Besides, there inevitably exist equipment defects in actual QKD systems, such as certain defects in phase modulators and intensity modulators, which lead to distinguishability of quantum states in higher dimensions and result in side-channel vulnerabilities. An eavesdropper can carry out corresponding attacks, thereby threatening the actual security of QKD systems. To overcome the above limitations, we propose an improved protocol on quantum key distribution based on monitoring heralded single-photon sources. Due to the simultaneity of parametric down-conversion photon pairs, we can accurately predict the arrival of one photon by measuring the arrival time of another photon. Through this way, we can greatly reduce the probability of vacuum states in the signal light, and increase the longest transmission distance of the QKD system. Moreover, a light source monitoring module is inserted into the sender’s side. By randomly selecting a certain period of time through the source monitoring module to measure the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between the signal light and the idle light , we can estimate the side-channel information leakage of the source and then obtain the key generation rate. Compared with the QKD protocol based on monitoring weak coherent sources, our present protocol can give a better performance in either the transmission distance or the key generation rate, especially when the interference error is large. In addition, in principle, our present protocol can also be extended to other quantum key distribution protocols, such as the measurement-device-independent protocols, to further improve the security and practicability of QKD systems. Therefore, our present work can provide valuable references for realizing the large-scale application of quantum communication networks in the near future.
Increasing the bit rate and transmission distance of quantum key distribution (QKD) without quantum repeaters is a formidable challenge, which is limited by the secret-key capacity (SKC). Fortunately, phase-matching QKD (PM-QKD) can overcome this limitation by matching the phase of two coherent states and encoding the key information into the common phase. But the probability of the weak coherent source (WCS) sending a single photon is small, so studying the QKD of different signal sources is one of the effective ways to improve the performance of the QKD protocol. The single-photon-added coherent state (SPACS) has a high probability of sending single photons and is closer to an ideal single-photon source than WCS. We have done simulations combining the advantages of the source with the advantages of PM-QKD. Numerical simulations show that the SPACS-PM-QKD protocol also has the ability to break the SKC, and using the SPACS is better in terms of communication distance and key rate compared to WCS.