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Acta Physica Sinica

Overview of applications of heralded single photon source in quantum key distribution

Jie Meng, Le-Chen Xu, Chengjun Zhang, Chunhui Zhang, Qin Wang

Published Jan 1, 2022• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we mainly introduce the preparation and physical properties of the heralded single-photon source, the development history and its applications in three typical quantum key distribution protocols, including BB84, measurement-device-independent and twin-field quantum key distribution protocols. Moreover, we make comparisons of the above quantum key distribution protocols between using heralded single-photon source and using weak coherent sources, and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Besides, according to the characteristics of single-photon interference in twin-field quantum key distributions, the limitations of separately applying heralded single-photon sources to twin-field quantum key distributions are revealed, and possible solutions are discussed. Therefore, this work may provide valuable references and help for the practical implementation of quantum secure communication in the near future.

DOI
10.7498/aps.71.20220344

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The security of quantum key distribution (QKD) is based on the basic principles of quantum mechanics, and therefore has unconditional security in theory. In existing quantum key distribution systems, weakly coherent sources (WCSs) are often used as light sources due to a high probability of vacuum pulses in these sources, resulting in limited transmission distances. Besides, there inevitably exist equipment defects in actual QKD systems, such as certain defects in phase modulators and intensity modulators, which lead to distinguishability of quantum states in higher dimensions and result in side-channel vulnerabilities. An eavesdropper can carry out corresponding attacks, thereby threatening the actual security of QKD systems. To overcome the above limitations, we propose an improved protocol on quantum key distribution based on monitoring heralded single-photon sources. Due to the simultaneity of parametric down-conversion photon pairs, we can accurately predict the arrival of one photon by measuring the arrival time of another photon. Through this way, we can greatly reduce the probability of vacuum states in the signal light, and increase the longest transmission distance of the QKD system. Moreover, a light source monitoring module is inserted into the sender’s side. By randomly selecting a certain period of time through the source monitoring module to measure the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between the signal light and the idle light , we can estimate the side-channel information leakage of the source and then obtain the key generation rate. Compared with the QKD protocol based on monitoring weak coherent sources, our present protocol can give a better performance in either the transmission distance or the key generation rate, especially when the interference error is large. In addition, in principle, our present protocol can also be extended to other quantum key distribution protocols, such as the measurement-device-independent protocols, to further improve the security and practicability of QKD systems. Therefore, our present work can provide valuable references for realizing the large-scale application of quantum communication networks in the near future.
In this paper, we present schemes on implementing the single-photon-added coherent source in quantum key distributions. We apply this source in either the standard BB84 protocol or the recently proposed measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution, comparing their performance with the cases of using other existing sources, e.g., the weak coherent source or the heralded single-photon source, and giving out corresponding numerical simulations. Our simulation results show that in both protocols the single-photon-added coherent source can greatly exceed all other existing sources. Moreover, even when taking statistical fluctuation into account, a high key generation rate can still be achieved at long distance by applying this source.
Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) can overcome the fundamental rate-loss limit in the point-to-point QKD without a quantum repeater and achieve high key rates over long distances. However, TF-QKD protocol and its variants commonly use weak coherent pulses (WCPs) as light sources. The vacuum part of WCP accounts for a large proportion, resulting in the lower photon detection rate of the communication receiver, which leads to a shorter transmission distance of the secret key. In this paper, we propose an active-decoy TF-QKD protocol with heralded single-photon source (HSPS), which can achieve higher key rate and longer transmission distance than the active-decoy TF-QKD protocol with WCPs. Also, in order to resist the side channel attacks caused by actively modulating intensity of the pulses, we propose a passive-decoy TF-QKD protocol with HSPS to enhance the security, which can perform almost as good as the active-decoy TF-QKD protocol with WCPs.
In practical quantum key distribution systems, there inevitably exist errors in the quantum state preparation process due to imperfections in realistic equipment and devices. Those errors would lead to some security loopholes in the quantum key distribution systems. According to the work of Tamaki et al. ( Phys. Rev. A 90 052314 ), here in this work we propose a state preparation error tolerant quantum key distribution protocol through using heralded single-photon sources. In this protocol, we characterize the size of the error in the preparation state of Alice and bring it into the security analysis, thereby avoiding possible security loopholes and improving the security of the system. Moreover, we take the three-intensity decoy-state method for example to introduce the method of constructing the model and estimating the parameters, and carry out corresponding numerical simulations. We make a comparison between the loss tolerant protocol with weak coherent source (WCS) and our present protocol using heralded single-photon source (HSPS). Simulation results show that under the same state preparation error, the key generation rate of the protocol based on WCS is higher than that of protocol based on HSPS at short transmission distances (e.g. less than 150 km). The main reason is that the detection efficiency of the local detector used in the latter scheme is low. However, in the case of long transmission distances (e.g. greater than 200 km), the key generation rate of scheme with WCS drops deeply, while the decline of the key generation rate of the present scheme is much flatter. As a result, the former can no longer generate keys after 211 km, while the latter can transmit a maximum distance of 228 km. Moreover, we also make a comparison between the present scheme and the GLLP protocol with HSPS. The simulation results show that the GLLP protocol with HSPS is very sensitive to the state preparation error and its key generation rate will rapidly decrease with the increase of the state preparation error. On the contrary, our present protocol shows almost no performance degradation under practical state preparation errors. It thus verify the robustness against the state preparation errors of our present work. In addition, in principle, the method can also be combined with the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution protocol and the twin-field quantum key distribution protocol to further increase the secure communication transmission distance that the present system can reach. Therefore, this work may provide an important reference value for the practical application of long-distance quantum secure communication in the near future.
An ever-increasing demand for higher photon generation rates in quantum light sources often leads to the generation of multiple photon pairs, making quantum secure imaging, sensing, and communication vulnerable to photon number splitting (PNS) attacks. Here, we investigate the use of weak coherent sources (WCS) and heralded single-photon sources (HSPS) in conjunction with quantum key distribution protocols to mitigate these risks. Our initial observation shows that the BB84 protocol using HSPS has an advantage in secured information transfer over the WCS. We then extend our comparative study between WCS and HSPS to high dimensional protocols and conduct a rigorous analysis to estimate a benchmark for quantum advantage in secure bit rate thresholds for secure information transfer. When combined with high-dimensional states (hybrid encoding), the two-state non-orthogonal encoding protocol offers an increased resistance to PNS and unambiguous state discrimination attacks. These findings suggest that integrating high dimensional encoding would strengthen the security and performance of quantum secure imaging, sensing, and communication systems for practical and resilient implementations at shorter distances.