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International Journal of Quantum Information

A two-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol based on polarization-phase encoding

Ali Mehri Toonabi, Mahdi Davoudi Darareh, Shahrooz Janbaz

Published Oct 1, 2019• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new quantum key distribution protocol, which we refer to as polarization-phase (PoP) protocol. In this protocol, two degrees of photonic freedom of the same particle in a hybrid manner are used to encode the information in the format of two- or high-dimensional quantum states (qubits and qudits, respectively). Here, we only discuss the qubit version of the general PoP protocol (we refer to two-dimensional PoP (TD-PoP) protocol) as an interesting extension for the standard BB84 protocol. We investigate the performance of the TD-PoP protocol using infinite-key analysis against restricted individual attacks, i.e. the intercept-resend and photon number splitting attacks, in both ideal single-photon and Poisson (attenuated laser) sources. In addition, we demonstrate that this protocol, despite using two physical dimensions, is simple and fully has empirical implementation capability. Ability to extract two bits of information from each detection event, and increasing the sifting parameter, the secure key rate, and the likelihood of detection of an eavesdropper, are the advantages of the TD-PoP protocol compared to the standard polarization- or phase-encoded BB84 protocol.

DOI
10.1142/s0219749919500588

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In this paper, we introduce a new quantum key distribution protocol, which we refer to as polarization-phase (PoP) protocol. In this protocol, two degrees of photonic freedom of the same particle in a hybrid manner are used to encode the information in the format of two- or high-dimensional quantum states (qubits and qudits, respectively). Here, we only discuss the qubit version of the general PoP protocol (we refer to two-dimensional PoP (TD-PoP) protocol) as an interesting extension for the standard BB84 protocol. We investigate the performance of the TD-PoP protocol using infinite-key analysis against restricted individual attacks, i.e. the intercept-resend and photon number splitting attacks, in both ideal single-photon and Poisson (attenuated laser) sources. In addition, we demonstrate that this protocol, despite using two physical dimensions, is simple and fully has empirical implementation capability. Ability to extract two bits of information from each detection event, and increasing the sifting parameter, the secure key rate, and the likelihood of detection of an eavesdropper, are the advantages of the TD-PoP protocol compared to the standard polarization- or phase-encoded BB84 protocol.
In this work, we introduce a high-dimensional polarization-phase (PoP)-based quantum key distribution protocol, briefly named PoP[Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the dimension of a hybrid quantum state including polarization and phase degrees of freedom of the same photon, and [Formula: see text] is the number of mutually unbiased bases. We present a detailed description of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol as a special case, and evaluate its security against various individual and coherent eavesdropping strategies, and in each case, we compare it with the BB84 and the two-dimensional (TD)-PoP protocols. In all the strategies, the error threshold and the effective transmission rate of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol are far greater than the other two protocols. Unlike most high-dimensional protocols, the simplicity of producing and detecting the qudits and the use of conventional components (such as traditional single-photon sources and quantum channels) are among the features of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol.
Abstract The BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol sets the foundation for achieving secure communication against quantum threats. Since its inception, significant advancements have aimed towards frugal experimental implementations with enhanced security. In this paper, we report a passive polarization encoded BB84 protocol. By passively and randomly encoding the polarization states, the setup avoids active modulation and simplifies design with security standards analogous to entanglement-based QKD. The heralding of a probabilistic single-photon source ensures an extremely low probability of multi-photon emissions evading photon number-splitting attacks. The quality of the single-photon source and thus, the QKD setup is certified by the second-order correlation function, g (2) (0) = 0.006 ± 0.0002. Our protocol provides an optimisation trade-off between the conventional BB84 and the BBM92 protocol. The advantage relies on using fewer detectors (compared to the BBM92 protocol) and no reliance on active quantum random number generators (compared to the standard BB84) to drive Alice’s encoding scheme. Our implementation achieves a quantum bit error rate of 7% and a secure key rate of 5 kbps.
Quantum key distribution technology refers to a method to share keys between communication parties by transmitting quantum states in public channels. Although unconditional security is the main advantage of QKD, its application prospect has been controversial in practical implementation due to the potential security risks caused by device imperfections. Fortunately, the measurement device independent quantum key distribution protocol removes the vulnerability of all measurement devices and greatly improves the practical security of the quantum key distribution system. However, the security key rate of this protocol is still lower than that of other quantum key distribution protocols. At present, using high-dimensional coding to improve the performance of the quantum key distribution protocol has been proved in theory and experiment, and recently, it has been proposed to use high-dimensional coding to improve the performance of measurement device independent quantum key distribution protocol, but because these protocols have higher requirements for the laboratory equipment performance, that the high-dimensional encoding is applied to the aforementioned protocol still has many difficulties in practical application. In this paper, we propose a hybrid coding based on the polarization and two-degree phase of freedom measurement device independent quantum key distribution protocol. In the first place in an ideal case, we introduce in detail the protocol decoding rules, then introduce 4intensity decoy-state method to solve the problem of actual light source multiphoton, in addition we also consider the statistical fluctuation effect under the condition of limited code length, channel loss, actual dark count of single photon detector and detection efficiency problem. Finally, the optimal security code rate and its corresponding optimal parameters are obtained by full parameter optimization method, And the numerical simulation results show that the security key rate of this protocol is increased by 50% by considering the practical implementation. We point out that compared with other measurement device independent quantum key distribution protocol, the proposed agreement requires local users only to have a phase encoding device and a polarization coding device, and 4 single photon detectors for detecting side. The proposed device can use the existing experimental condition, beyond that, compared with the time encoding based high dimensional measurement device independent quantum key distribution protocol, the proposed protocol possesses the advantage that the rate of system security key can be increased without increasing the repetition frequency of users. It is proved that this protocol has great application value in the future field of quantum communication, especially, in the field of quantum network communication.
Quantum key distribution schemes which employ encoding on vacuum-one-photon qubits are capable of transferring more information bits per particle than the standard schemes employing polarization or phase coding. We calculate the maximum number of classical bits per particle that can be securely transferred when the key distribution is performed with the BB84 and B92 protocols, respectively, using the vacuum-one-photon qubits. In particular, we show that for a generalized B92 protocol with the vacuum-one-photon qubits, a maximum of two bits per particle can be securely transferred. We also demonstrate the advantage brought about by performing a generalized measurement that is optimized for unambiguous discrimination of the encoded states: the parameter range where the transfer of two bits per particle can be achieved is dramatically enhanced as compared to the corresponding parameter range of projective measurements.
Abstract The Quantum Key Distribution protocol can encode a single quantum state and implements an information-theoretically secure key distribution protocol in communication. In the actual QKD experimental system, there are usually two encoding methods which are phase encoding and polarization encoding. Ma et al (Phase-Matching Quantum Key Distribution, Phys. Rev. X., 2018, 83) proposed the phase-matching QKD protocol, which has high transmission and it is an extension of the measurement device independent QKD. This paper successfully gives the polarization scheme of this PM-QKD protocol, the bases in the polarization scheme are arbitrary, and eliminates detector side channel attacks. Furthermore, we give the security analysis and simulation results of the polarization scheme, and compare it with the BB84 protocol. The simulation results show that our protocol is superior to the BB84 protocol in terms of transmission distance under the fixed key rate.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum communication enable the secure exchange of information between remote parties. Currently, the distributed-phase-reference (DPR) protocols, which are based on weak coherent pulses, are among the most practical solutions for long-range QKD. During the last 10 years, long-distance fiber-based DPR systems have been successfully demonstrated, although fundamental obstacles such as intrinsic channel losses limit their performance. Here, we introduce the first two-dimensional DPR-QKD protocol in which information is encoded in the time and phase of weak coherent pulses. The ability of extracting two bits of information per detection event, enables a higher secret key rate in specific realistic network scenarios. Moreover, despite the use of more dimensions, the proposed protocol remains simple, practical, and fully integrable.