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Communications Physics

Improving the performance of practical decoy-state quantum key distribution with advantage distillation technology

Hong-Wei Li, Chun-Mei Zhang, Mu-Sheng Jiang, Qing-yu Cai

Published Mar 11, 2022• 51 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides a promising solution for sharing information-theoretic secret keys between two remote legitimate parties. To improve the maximal transmission distance and the maximal error rate tolerance, we apply the advantage distillation technology to analyze the security of practical decoy-state QKD systems. Based on the practical experimental parameters, the device-dependent QKD protocols and the measurement-device-independent QKD protocols have been respectively analyzed, and our analysis results demonstrate that the advantage distillation technology can significantly improve the performance of various QKD protocols. In the four-state and six-state device-dependent QKD protocols, we prove that the maximal transmission distance can be improved from 142 km to 180 km and from 146 km to 187 km respectively. In the four-state and six-state measurement-device-independent QKD protocols, we prove that the maximal transmission distance can be improved from 195 km to 273 km and from 200 km to 282 km respectively.

DOI
10.1038/s42005-022-00831-4

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Abstract Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides a promising solution for sharing information-theoretic secret keys between two remote legitimate parties. To improve the maximal transmission distance and the maximal error rate tolerance, we apply the advantage distillation technology to analyze the security of practical decoy-state QKD systems. Based on the practical experimental parameters, the device-dependent QKD protocols and the measurement-device-independent QKD protocols have been respectively analyzed, and our analysis results demonstrate that the advantage distillation technology can significantly improve the performance of various QKD protocols. In the four-state and six-state device-dependent QKD protocols, we prove that the maximal transmission distance can be improved from 142 km to 180 km and from 146 km to 187 km respectively. In the four-state and six-state measurement-device-independent QKD protocols, we prove that the maximal transmission distance can be improved from 195 km to 273 km and from 200 km to 282 km respectively.
The reference-frame-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-QKD) has the advantage of tolerating reference frames that slowly vary. It can generate secure keys between two remote users with slowly drifted and unknown reference frames. However, the drift of reference frames may inevitably compromise the performance of QKD systems. In the paper, we employ the advantage distillation technology (ADT) to the RFI-QKD and the RFI measurement-device-independent QKD (RFI MDI-QKD), and we then analyze the effect of ADT on the performance of decoy-state RFI-QKD and RFI MDI-QKD in both asymptotic and nonasymptotic cases. The simulation results show that ADT can significantly improve the maximum transmission distance and the maximum tolerable background error rate. Furthermore, the performance of RFI-QKD and RFI MDI-QKD in terms of the secret key rate and maximum transmission distance are still greatly improved when statistical fluctuations are taken into account. Our work combines the merits of the ADT and RFI-QKD protocols, which further enhances the robustness and practicability of QKD systems.
Device-independent quantum secret sharing (DI-QSS) provides high security by eliminating the need to trust devices, yet its practical performance is limited by channel loss and noise. This work extends advantage distillation from two-party quantum key distribution (QKD) to three-party DI-QSS, redesigning the corresponding data interaction and verification procedures. The technique is systematically applied to the basic protocol and three active improvement strategies: noise preprocessing, post-selection, and their combination. This approach enhances noise tolerance, reduces the required global detection efficiency threshold, and significantly extends the maximum secure communication distance. Numerical simulations demonstrate that for the basic protocol over fiber, the maximum secure distance increases from 0.16 km to 1.85 km, and the noise tolerance improves from 10.17% to 28.49%. The results show that generalizing advantage distillation to the three-party setting effectively strengthens the protocol's robustness and practicality, enhancing its adaptability to realistic noise and advancing the development of more reliable quantum secret sharing systems.
The advantage distillation (AD) method can significantly improve the bit error rate tolerance and transmission distance for different quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols. To enhance the transmission distance in a decoy-three-state QKD protocol, we analyze security using the AD method for the decoy-three-state QKD protocol with a weak-coherent source. The theoretical analysis results indicate that the AD method can significantly enhance the transmission distance of the decoy-three-state QKD protocol. Moreover, by applying the AD method, we experimentally realize the decoy-three-state QKD protocol with 130 km transmission distance. Our analysis results demonstrate that the AD method can significantly improve the performance of decoy-three-state QKD protocols, which can be applied in the quantum network in future research.
In this work, we apply the advantage distillation method to improve the performance of a practical twin-field quantum key distribution system under collective attack. Compared with the previous analysis result given by Maeda, Sasaki and Koashi [Nature Communication 10, 3140 (2019)], the maximal transmission distance obtained by our analysis method will be increased from 420 km to 470 km. By increasing the loss-independent misalignment error to 12%, the previous analysis method can not overcome the rate-distance bound. However, our analysis method can still overcome the rate-distance bound when the misalignment error is 16%. More surprisingly, we prove that twin-field quantum key distribution can generate positive secure key even if the misalignment error is close to 50%, thus our analysis method can significantly improve the performance of a practical twin-field quantum key distribution system.
Advantage distillation (AD) provides a means of separating highly correlated raw key bits from weakly correlated information in quantum key distribution (QKD). In this Letter, we apply the AD method to improve the performance of reference-frame-independent QKD (RFI-QKD). Simulation results show that, compared with RFI-QKD without AD, RFI-QKD with AD can tolerate higher system errors and obtain better performance on the secret key rate and transmission distance. Furthermore, we extend the AD method to RFI measurement-device-independent QKD (RFI-MDI-QKD) and demonstrate that the AD method can improve the performance of RFI-MDI-QKD more significantly.
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) allows two legitimate parties, Alice and Bob, to share a secret key with information-theoretic security, ensuring that an eavesdropper, Eve, cannot obtain any information about the key. A QKD protocol is provably secure only when the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) is below a certain threshold and, therefore, the presence of noise inherently limits the maximum transmission distance. Advantage Distillation (AD) is a classical post-processing technique that enhances QKD protocols by increasing the maximum acceptable QBER and, thus, allows extending the communication range. AD operates by post-selecting blocks of bits and extracting fewer but highly correlated bits between Alice and Bob, which exhibit a reduced QBER, thus lowering the amount of information that has to be disclosed during the information reconciliation step. In this study, we present a new analytical expression for the secure key rate. This will enable a finite-size secure key length analysis of the decoy state version of the BB84 protocol including AD post-processing.