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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Enhanced measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution in reference-frame-independent scenario

Hao Zhang, Chunhui Zhang, Chun-Mei Zhang, Guang‐Can Guo, Qin Wang

Published Jan 29, 2019• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The protocol of reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution has many advantages compared with other existing quantum key distribution protocols, and thus has many interesting applications in the field of quantum information. In this paper, we propose a scheme on the reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution by implementing heralded single-photon sources, where we only need to modulate pump light into two intensities (vacuum and nonvacuum). Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that our scheme can exhibit much longer transmission distance than the standard three-intensity decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution under a reference-frame-independent scenario.

DOI
10.1364/josab.36.000476

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The protocol of reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution has many advantages compared with other existing quantum key distribution protocols, and thus has many interesting applications in the field of quantum information. In this paper, we propose a scheme on the reference-frame-independent measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution by implementing heralded single-photon sources, where we only need to modulate pump light into two intensities (vacuum and nonvacuum). Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that our scheme can exhibit much longer transmission distance than the standard three-intensity decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution under a reference-frame-independent scenario.
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.
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.
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.
We present an efficient decoy-state protocol measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution without vacuum source, with the heralded single-photon source (HSPS) and global optimization. This protocol is able to give a high key rate and avoid the security problem caused by the vacuum source or extremely weak source. In the protocol, the heralded outcome pulse pairs in XXX basis are used as decoy pairs and all outcome pairs in ZZZ basis are used as signal pairs. Each side uses three different intensities for the outcome pulses, two in XXX basis and one in ZZZ basis. In order to efficiently optimize the key rate globally, we present an efficient method to estimate what values we will observe by using the HSPS. This efficient method greatly reduces the computation complexity from the fourfold summation to a single-fold summation in the numerical simulation and makes it operable to seek the optimization points globally.
In this paper, we put forward a new approach towards realizing measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with passive heralded single-photon sources. In this approach, both Alice and Bob prepare the parametric down-conversion source, where the heralding photons are labeled according to different types of clicks from the local detectors, and the heralded ones can correspondingly be marked with different tags at the receiver's side. Then one can obtain four sets of data through using only one-intensity of pump light by observing different kinds of clicks of local detectors. By employing the newest formulae to do parameter estimation, we could achieve very precise prediction for the two-single-photon pulse contribution. Furthermore, by carrying out corresponding numerical simulations, we compare the new method with other practical schemes of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution. We demonstrate that our new proposed passive scheme can exhibit remarkable improvement over the conventional three-intensity decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with either heralded single-photon sources or weak coherent sources. Besides, it does not need intensity modulation and can thus diminish source-error defects existing in several other active decoy-state methods. Therefore, if taking intensity modulating errors into account, our new method will show even more brilliant performance.