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Scientific Reports

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution via quantum blockade

Yi-Heng Zhou, Zong‐Wen Yu, Ao Li, Xiao-Long Hu, Cong Jiang, Xiang‐Bin Wang

Published Mar 1, 2018• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Efficiency in measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution(MDI-QKD) can be improved not only by the protocol, but also single-photon sources. We study the behavior of MDI-QKD with statistical fluctuation using quantum blockade source. Numerical simulation for a type of 4-intensity protocol shows that, after parameter optimization, this source can improve the final key rate by 100 times compared with traditional weak coherent state sources.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-018-21576-7

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Efficiency in measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution(MDI-QKD) can be improved not only by the protocol, but also single-photon sources. We study the behavior of MDI-QKD with statistical fluctuation using quantum blockade source. Numerical simulation for a type of 4-intensity protocol shows that, after parameter optimization, this source can improve the final key rate by 100 times compared with traditional weak coherent state sources.
The measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol has been proposed for the purpose of removing the detector side channel attacks. Due to the multiphoton events of coherent states sources, real-life implementations of MDI-QKD protocol must employ decoy states to beat the photon-number-splitting attack. Decoy states for MDI-QKD based on the weak coherent states (WCSs) have been studied recently. In this Letter, we propose to perform MDI-QKD protocol with modified coherent states (MCS) sources. We simulate the performance of MDI-QKD with the decoy states based on MCS sources. And our simulation indicates that both the secure-key rate and transmission distance can be improved evidently with MCS sources. The physics behind this improvement is that the probability of multiphoton events of the MCS is lower than that of WCSs while at the same time the probability of single-photon is higher.
Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol can remove all the loopholes of the detection devices and, thus, has attracted much attention. Based on the technique of single-photon interference, we propose a modified MDI-QKD protocol with phase post-selection. We prove the security of the announcement of the private phases in the X basis and show how to apply the phase post-selection method to the double-scanning four-intensity MDI-QKD protocol. The numerical results show that the phase post-selection method can significantly improve the key rates at all distances. In the double-scanning method, two parameters need to be scanned in the calculation of the final key rate, and the global parameter optimization is pretty time-consuming. We propose an accelerated method that can greatly reduce the running time of the global parameter optimization program. This makes the method practically useful in an unstable channel.
Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI-QKD) enables secure communication without trusting the measurement devices, but its performance critically depends on the quality of the employed photon sources. We compare MDI-QKD implementations based on Weak Coherent Pulses (WCPs) with those employing Quantum Dot (QD) single-photon sources. WCP-based schemes are fundamentally limited by Poissonian photon-number statistics, imposing a trade-off between single- and multi-photon emissions, whereas QD sources exhibit sub-Poissonian statistics with low antibunching parameter g(2)(0)g^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0). Using a decoy-state analysis for both source types, we find that even at moderate mean photon numbers, QD-based implementations outperform the best-case WCP configuration - where the mean photon number is optimised at each transmission distance - across the full range of transmission distances. We further incorporate the effect of imperfect photon indistinguishability via Hong-Ou-Mandel interference visibilities into the security framework and demonstrate that both source types are highly sensitive to even small deviations from ideal indistinguishability, significantly affecting achievable key rates and maximum transmission distance.
Quantum cryptography has a strong security that classical cryptography cannot match, and quantum key distribution (QKD) is the most important method of quantum cryptography. Reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent QKD (RFI-MDI-QKD) protocol can avoid the drift of the reference frame and all side channels of measurement devices. However, RFI MDI-QKD usually employs a weak coherent state (WCS) as the light source, which limits the transmission distance of secure keys. Here, by using heralded single-photon sources, we investigate an improved decoy-state RFI-MDI-QKD scheme. We perform numerical simulations for the scheme under different scenarios, such as considering the finite size and different drift angles. Compared with the scheme with WCS, our scheme can significantly improve the transmission distance of RFI-MDI-QKD.
To date, only active-decoy-state methods have been adopted in current measurement-device-independent (MDI) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols, causing security loopholes when modulating multiple light intensities with practical devices. To solve this problem, the passive-decoy-state method will be a good choice. Until today practical passive-decoy-state MDI QKD is still missing. In this paper, based on a recently discussed structure of heralded single-photon sources, we propose a passive-decoy-state MDI QKD protocol. In present work, one does not need to modulate light sources into different intensities, but utilizes the built-in local detection events to passively generate different decoy states. Furthermore, through carrying out an appropriate mathematical method, we are able to give very precise estimations for single-photon-pair contributions. As a result, our protocol can exhibit distinct advantages compared with state-of-the-art MDI QKD schemes even when the finite-key-size effect is taken into account. Therefore, our protocol seems a promising candidate to enhance both the security and performance of MDI QKD in practical implementation.
The performance of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) with different numbers of decoy-state are compared. The statistical fluctuation due to the finite length of data is considered based on the standard statistical analysis. The simulation results show that two-decoy-state method is a nearly optimal estimation in the asymptotic case. In the condition of considering statistical fluctuations, the finite length of raw key will slightly decrease the secret key rate. In all simulation cases, the key rate is maximized by optimizing the intensities of the signals. Our numerical simulation may provide valuable theoretical reference for the practical MDI-QKD experiments.