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Research in Optical Sciences

Single Photons, Entanglement Swapping and Heralded Photon Amplification for Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution

Rob Thew, Clara I. Osorio, Natalia Bruno, Enrico Pomarico, Thiago Rodrigues da Silva Barbosa, Bruno Sanguinetti, Nicolas Sangouard, Hugo Zbinden, Nicolas Gisin

Published Jan 1, 2012• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We discuss several key challenges for quantum communication ranging from engineering photon sources through faithful entanglement swapping to heralded photon, or qubit, amplification and their implications for experimental device independent QKD.
DOI
10.1364/qim.2012.qw1a.6

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Device-independent quantum key distribution protocols allow two honest users to establish a secret key with minimal levels of trust on the provider, as security is proven without any assumption on the inner working of the devices used for the distribution. Unfortunately, the implementation of these protocols is challenging, as it requires the observation of a large Bell-inequality violation between the two distant users. Here, we introduce novel photonic protocols for device-independent quantum key distribution exploiting single-photon sources and heralding-type architectures . The heralding process is designed so that transmission losses become irrelevant for security. We then show how the use of single-photon sources for entanglement distribution in these architectures, instead of standard entangled-pair generation schemes, provides significant improvements on the attainable key rates and distances over previous proposals. Given the current progress in single-photon sources, our work opens up a promising avenue for device-independent quantum key distribution implementations.
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The main work done along my PhD is related to entangled states composed of a single photon. This state generation requires fewer resources when compared to other entangled states generation. Moreover, it's easily scaled to multipartite scenarios and is also robust to setup inefficiencies of quantum repeaters. Our first work with this state was related to its generation and detection, encouraging us to pursue more evidences that this state is useful for quantum communication. The following project was related to demonstrate how this state can be used in a semi-device independent scenario. Our last project regards the use of a heralded photon amplifier that is intended to compensate the loss that is present during state distribution. All these advances makes us confident that this kind of state can find its application in quantum communication, and also encourage us to pursue new practical implementations such as device independent quantum key distribution.
Entanglement-based quantum key distribution (e-QKD) is a cornerstone of quantum-secure communication, offering advantages in device-independent security, compatibility with quantum networks, and resilience to specific attacks. While the probabilistic nature of entangled photon generation has slowed down experimental adoption compared to prepare-and-measure approaches, deterministic solid-state emitters—particularly epitaxial quantum dots (QDs)—have recently emerged as promising candidates for scalable, high-rate implementations. In this review, we survey the main e-QKD protocols along with their practical requirements and assess current technologies for entangled photon pair generation. We place particular emphasis on the state of the art in QD-based entangled photon sources, analyzing design strategies and performance metrics that directly impact secure key generation. Recent experimental advances demonstrating entanglement distribution and e-QKD with QDs over both fiber and free-space channels are discussed in detail. We conclude with an outlook on remaining challenges in source engineering, transmission capacity, and system integration, highlighting the potential of QDs to enable next-generation quantum communication technologies.