Physical Review A
High-capacity quantum Fibonacci coding for key distribution
David S. Simon, Nate Lawrence, Jacob Trevino, Luca Dal Negro, Alexander V. Sergienko
Abstract
Quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution (QKD) have been the most successful applications of quantum information processing, highlighting the unique capability of quantum mechanics, through the no-cloning theorem, to securely share encryption keys between two parties. Here, we present an approach to high-capacity, high-efficiency QKD by exploiting cross-disciplinary ideas from quantum information theory and the theory of light scattering of aperiodic photonic media. We propose a unique type of entangled-photon source, as well as a physical mechanism for efficiently sharing keys. The key-sharing protocol combines entanglement with the mathematical properties of a recursive sequence to allow a realization of the physical conditions necessary for implementation of the no-cloning principle for QKD, while the source produces entangled photons whose orbital angular momenta (OAM) are in a superposition of Fibonacci numbers. The source is used to implement a particular physical realization of the protocol by randomly encoding the Fibonacci sequence onto entangled OAM states, allowing secure generation of long keys from few photons. Unlike in polarization-based protocols, reference frame alignment is unnecessary, while the required experimental setup is simpler than other OAM-based protocols capable of achieving the same capacity and its complexity grows less rapidly with increasing range of OAM used.