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Chinese Physics B

Improved decoy-state quantum key distribution with uncharacterized heralded single-photon sources

Le-Chen 乐辰 Xu 徐, Chun-Hui 春辉 Zhang 张, Xing-Yu 星宇 Zhou 周, Qin Wang

Published Oct 24, 2023• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Encoding system plays a significant role in quantum key distribution (QKD). However, the security and performance of QKD systems can be compromised by encoding misalignment due to the inevitable defects in realistic devices. To alleviate the influence of misalignments, a method exploiting statistics from mismatched basis is proposed to enable uncharacterized sources to generate secure keys in QKD. In this work, we propose a scheme on four-intensity decoy-state quantum key distribution with uncharacterized heralded single-photon sources. It only requires the source states are prepared in a two-dimensional Hilbert space, and can thus reduce the complexity of practical realizations. Moreover, we carry out corresponding numerical simulations and demonstrate that our present four-intensity decoy-state scheme can achieve a much higher key rate compared than a three-intensity decoy-state method, and meantime it can obtain a longer transmission distance compared than the one using weak coherent sources.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/ad062a

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Encoding system plays a significant role in quantum key distribution (QKD). However, the security and performance of QKD systems can be compromised by encoding misalignment due to the inevitable defects in realistic devices. To alleviate the influence of misalignments, a method exploiting statistics from mismatched basis is proposed to enable uncharacterized sources to generate secure keys in QKD. In this work, we propose a scheme on four-intensity decoy-state quantum key distribution with uncharacterized heralded single-photon sources. It only requires the source states are prepared in a two-dimensional Hilbert space, and can thus reduce the complexity of practical realizations. Moreover, we carry out corresponding numerical simulations and demonstrate that our present four-intensity decoy-state scheme can achieve a much higher key rate compared than a three-intensity decoy-state method, and meantime it can obtain a longer transmission distance compared than the one using weak coherent sources.
We present a scheme for the practical decoy-state quantum key distribution with heralded single-photon source. In this scheme, only two-intensity decoy states are employed. However, its performance can approach the asymptotic case of using infinite decoy states. We compare it with the standard three-intensity decoy-state method, and through numerical simulations, we demonstrate its significant improvement over the three-intensity method in both the final key rate and the secure transmission distance. Furthermore, when taking statistical fluctuations into account, a very high key generation rate can still be obtained even at a long transmission distance.
Recently the performance of the quantum key distribution (QKD) is substantially improved by the decoy state method and the non-orthogonal encoding protocol, separately. In this paper, a practical non-orthogonal decoy state protocol with a heralded single photon source (HSPS) for QKD is presented. The protocol is based on 4 states with different intensities, i.e. one signal state and three decoy states. The signal state is for generating keys; the decoy states are for detecting the eavesdropping and estimating the fraction of single-photon and two-photon pulses. We have discussed three cases of this protocol, i.e. the general case, the optimal case and the special case. Moreover, the final key rate over transmission distance is simulated. For the low dark count of the HSPS and the utilization of the two-photon pulses, our protocol has a higher key rate and a longer transmission distance than any other decoy state protocol.
Quantum key distribution involving decoy-states is a significant application of quantum information. By using three-intensity decoy-states of single-photon-added coherent sources, we propose a practically realizable scheme on quantum key distribution which approaches very closely the ideal asymptotic case of an infinite number of decoy-states. We make a comparative study between this scheme and two other existing ones, i.e., two-intensity decoy-states with single-photon-added coherent sources, and three-intensity decoy-states with weak coherent sources. Through numerical analysis, we demonstrate the advantages of our scheme in secure transmission distance and the final key generation rate.
Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) has been widely investigated due to its remarkable advantages on the achievable transmission distance and practical security. However, the relative low key generation rate limits its real-life implementations. In this work, we adopt the newly proposed four-intensity decoy-state scheme [Phys. Rev. A 93, 042324 (2016)] to study the performance of MDI-QKD with heralded single-photon sources (HSPS). Corresponding simulation results demonstrate that the four-intensity decoy-state scheme combining HSPS can drastically improve both the key generation rate and transmission distance in MDI-QKD, which may be very promising in future MDI-QKD systems.
In practical quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, the heralded single photon source (HSPS) based on parametric down-conversion (PDC) has attracted significant attentions from many researchers because its various advantages compared to the weak coherent source. We propose a heralded single photon source-based decoy-state QKD with dual detectors and demonstrate in a theoretical simulation that this method improves the performance of QKD system. The secure key generation rate is increased significantly with our proposal both in thermal and Poisson distributions of photons. The secure key rate produced by our scheme is higher than the state of the art key rate of current high-speed QKD system. The decoy-state QKD system using the heralded single photon source with dual detectors can be an important alternative for the present practical QKD systems.