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Computers, materials & continua/Computers, materials & continua (Print)

Measurement Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution Based on Orbital Angular Momentum under Parametric Light Source

Meng Wang, Hong Lai, Lei Pan

Published Jan 1, 2020• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

On the one hand, existing measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocols have usually adopted single photon source (SPS) and weak coherent photon (WCP), however, these protocols have suffered from multi-photon problem brought from photon splitter number attacks. On the other hand, the orbital angular momentum (OAM)-MDI-QKD protocol does not need to compare and adjust the reference frame, solving the dependency of the base in the MDI-QKD protocol. Given that, we propose the OAM-MDI-QKD protocol based on the parametric light sources which mainly include single-photon-added-coherent (SPACS) and heralded single-photon sources (HSPS). Due to the stability of OAM and the participation of parametric light sources, the performance of MDI-QKD protocol gradually approaches the ideal situation. Numerical simulation shows that compared with WCP scheme, HSPS and SPACS schemes have increased the maximum secure transmission distance by 30 km and 40 km respectively.

DOI
10.32604/cmc.2020.07342

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International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC)•Jun 1, 2020•1 citation
On the one hand, existing measurement device independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocols have usually adopted single photon source (SPS) and weak coherent photon (WCP), however, these protocols have suffered from multi-photon problem brought from photon splitter number attacks. On the other hand, the orbital angular momentum (OAM)-MDI-QKD protocol does not need to compare and adjust the reference frame, solving the dependency of the base in the MDI-QKD protocol. Given that, we propose the OAM-MDI-QKD protocol based on the parametric light sources which mainly include single-photon-added-coherent (SPACS) and heralded single-photon sources (HSPS). Due to the stability of OAM and the participation of parametric light sources, the performance of MDI-QKD protocol gradually approaches the ideal situation. Numerical simulation shows that compared with WCP scheme, HSPS and SPACS schemes have increased the maximum secure transmission distance by 30 km and 40 km respectively.
In this paper, we propose a measurement-device-independent quantum-key-distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol using orbital angular momentum (OAM) in free space links, named the OAM-MDI-QKD protocol. In the proposed protocol, the OAM states of photons, instead of polarization states, are used as the information carriers to avoid the reference frame alignment, the decoy-state is adopted to overcome the security loophole caused by the weak coherent pulse source, and the high efficient OAM-sorter is adopted as the measurement tool for Charlie to obtain the output OAM state. Here, Charlie may be an untrusted third party. The results show that the authorized users, Alice and Bob, could distill a secret key with Charlie’s successful measurements, and the key generation performance is slightly better than that of the polarization-based MDI-QKD protocol in the two-dimensional OAM cases. Simultaneously, Alice and Bob can reduce the number of flipping the bits in the secure key distillation. It is indicated that a higher key generation rate performance could be obtained by a high dimensional OAM-MDI-QKD protocol because of the unlimited degree of freedom on OAM states. Moreover, the results show that the key generation rate and the transmission distance will decrease as the growth of the strength of atmospheric turbulence (AT) and the link attenuation. In addition, the decoy states used in the proposed protocol can get a considerable good performance without the need for an ideal source.
The memory-assisted measurement device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD), which requires less stringent conditions on the memory modules than that of quantum repeaters scheme, offers a practical mid-term solution to long-distance quantum key distribution. In this paper, considering the high cost and the high multi-photon probability, respectively, of single-photon source (SPS) and weak coherent source (WCS), we present schemes on implementing the parametric down-conversion sources, including the heralded single-photon source (HSPS) and single-photon-added coherent source (SPACS), in the memory-assisted MDI-QKD. By numerical simulations, we show that HSPS and SPACS scheme have apparent superiorities both in the key generation rate and the required minimal coherence time of quantum memory compared to WCS scheme. Moreover, we find that the robustness of SPACS against intensity fluctuations is better than WCS, but still worse than HSPS.
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.
With heralded pair coherent states (HPCS), orbital angular momentum (OAM) states and pulse position modulation (PPM) technology, a decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol is proposed. OAM states and PPM technology are used to realize the coding of the signal states in the HPCS light source. The use of HPCS light source, OAM coding and PPM coding cannot only reduce the error rate but also improve the key generation rate and communication distance. The new MDI-QKD protocol also employs three-intensity decoy states to avoid the attacks against the light source. By calculating the error rate and key generation rate, the performance of the MDI-QKD protocol is analyzed. Numerical simulation shows that the protocol has very low error rate and very high key generation rate. Moreover, the maximum communication distance can reach 455 km.
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.
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has the characteristics of high dimension and rotational symmetry. Quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes using OAM can carry more quantum information, improve the transmission capacity of information and reduce the errors caused by reference frame calibration errors. In this paper, we propose a measurement-device-independent QKD scheme based on OAM with dual detectors. On the basis of the measurement-device-independent QKD protocol, we use OAMs to encode the key information and then send them to a third-party measurement device. In the process of measurement, we adopt the dual-detector theory to improve key generation rate and transmission distance. Simulation analyses show that the secure transmission distance of our scheme can reach 140 km, which is about 30km more than the scheme using single detector.