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.
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.
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.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols most often use two conjugate bases in order to verify the security of the quantum channel. In the majority of protocols, these bases are mutually unbiased to one another, which is to say they are formed from balanced superpositions of the entire set of states in the opposing basis. Here, we introduce a high-dimensional QKD protocol using qubit-like states, referred to as Fourier-qubits (or F-qubits). In our scheme, each F-qubit is a superposition of only two computational basis states with a relative phase that can take d distinct values, where d is the dimension of the computational basis. This non-mutually-unbiased approach allows us to bound the information leaked to an eavesdropper, maintaining security in high-dimensional quantum systems despite the states’ seemingly two-dimensional nature. By simplifying state preparation and measurement, our protocol offers a practical alternative for secure high-dimensional quantum communications. We experimentally demonstrate this protocol for a noisy high-dimensional QKD channel using the orbital angular momentum degree of freedom of light and discuss the potential benefits for encoding in other degrees of freedom. High dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD) systems will allow for higher key generation rate, but with added complexity for creating and detecting high dimensional quantum states. The authors demonstrate a QKD protocol using “qubit-like” qudit states, “F-qubits”, with simpler generation and detection, maintaining the benefits of high dimensional QKD protocols.
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 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.
High-dimensional encoding using higher degrees of freedom has become topical in quantum communication protocols. When taking advantage of entanglement correlations, the state space can be made even larger. Here, we exploit the entanglement between two dimensional space and polarization qubits, to realize a four-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol. This is achieved by using entangled states as a basis, analogous to the Bell basis, rather than typically encoding information on individual qubits. The encoding and decoding in the required complementary bases is achieved by manipulating the Pancharatnam-Berry phase with a single optical element: a q-plate. Our scheme shows a transmission fidelity of 0.98 and secret key rate of 0.9 bits per photon. While the use of only static elements is preferable, we show that the low secret key rate is a consequence of the filter based detection of the modes, rather than our choice of encoding modes.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) provides a secure way of generating shared cryptographic keys between a sender (Alice) and a receiver (Bob). The original BB84 protocol uses a two-dimensional polarization basis, limiting the information content of a single photon to 1 bit. Using the transverse position of single photons as one basis and the Fourier space as a second basis, one can construct a pair of mutually unbiased higher-dimensional bases. This improves not only the security of the protocol, but also the key generation rate. We present experimental results with a Spatial-Light-Modulator-based encoding scheme employing two nearly orthogonal alphabets with on the order of 103symbols each and an information content of about 10 bit.