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arXiv:quant-ph/0207057 · Physical Review A

Security of quantum key distribution with entangled qutrits

Thomas Durt, Nicolas J. Cerf, Nicolas Gisin, Marek Żukowski

Published Jan 21, 2003• 165 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The study of quantum cryptography and quantum entanglement have traditionally been based on two-level quantum systems (qubits). In this paper, we consider a generalization of Ekert's entanglement-based quantum cryptographic protocol where qubits are replaced by three-level systems (qutrits). In order to investigate the security against the optimal individual attack, we derive the information gained by a potential eavesdropper applying a cloning-based attack. We exhibit the explicit form of this cloner, which is distinct from the previously known cloners, and conclude that the protocol is more robust than those based on entangled qubits as well as unentangled qutrits.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.67.012311

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The study of quantum cryptography and quantum entanglement have traditionally been based on two-level quantum systems (qubits). In this paper, we consider a generalization of Ekert's entanglement-based quantum cryptographic protocol where qubits are replaced by three-level systems (qutrits). In order to investigate the security against the optimal individual attack, we derive the information gained by a potential eavesdropper applying a cloning-based attack. We exhibit the explicit form of this cloner, which is distinct from the previously known cloners, and conclude that the protocol is more robust than those based on entangled qubits as well as unentangled qutrits.
We consider a generalization of Ekert's entanglement-based quantum cryptographic protocol where qubits are replaced by NNN- or ddd-dimensional systems (qudits). In order to study its robustness against optimal incoherent attacks, we derive the information gained by a potential eavesdropper during a cloning-based individual attack. In doing so, we generalize Cerf's formalism for cloning machines and establish the form of the most general cloning machine that respects all the symmetries of the problem. We obtain an upper bound on the error rate that guarantees the confidentiality of qudit generalizations of the Ekert's protocol for qubits.
We analyze the security of an Ekert type bipartite key distribution protocol coming under cloning attacks by an untrusted observer. Precisely, an eavesdropper is assumed to intercept and apply an asymmetric, phase-variant cloner on one or both qubits which are transmitted over public channel from an authenticated source to the trusted parties. We partially characterize two-qubit states from the perspective of designing a QKD protocol that can generate a distillable secret key among the trusted users even under such cloning attacks. We rely upon Devetak Winter framework for computing key rate so as to identify states, which when used in the protocol, secret-key can be distilled. Utility of an entangled state, for designing a successful QKD protocol, changes from single-qubit to double-qubits cloning attacks. Interestingly, we can distinguish some useful families of two-qubit entangled states when only one of the transmitted qubits is cloned by a malicious third party.
Quantum key distribution based on encoding in three-dimensional systems in the presence of several eavesdroppers is proposed. This extends the BB84 protocol in the presence of many eavesdroppers where two-level quantum systems (qubits) are replaced by three-level systems (qutrits). We discuss the scenarios involving two, three and four complementary bases. We derive the explicit form of Alice and Bob mutual information and the information gained by each eavesdropper. In particular, we show that, in the presence of only one eavesdropper, the protocol involving four bases is safer than the other ones. However, for two eavesdroppers, the security is strongly dependent on the attack probabilities. The effect of a large number of eavesdroppers is also investigated.
We consider two quantum cryptographic schemes relying on encoding the key into qudits, i.e., quantum states in a d-dimensional Hilbert space. The first cryptosystem uses two mutually unbiased bases (thereby extending the BB84 scheme), while the second exploits all d+1 available such bases (extending the six-state protocol for qubits). We derive the information gained by a potential eavesdropper applying a cloning-based individual attack, along with an upper bound on the error rate that ensures unconditional security against coherent attacks.
The security of quantum cryptography is guaranteed by the no-cloning theorem, which implies that an eavesdropper copying transmitted qubits in unknown states causes their disturbance. Nevertheless, in real cryptographic systems some level of disturbance has to be allowed to cover, e.g., transmission losses. An eavesdropper can attack such systems by replacing a noisy channel by a better one and by performing approximate cloning of transmitted qubits which disturb them but below the noise level assumed by legitimate users. We experimentally demonstrate such symmetric individual eavesdropping on the quantum key distribution protocols of Bennett and Brassard (BB84) and the trine-state spherical code of Renes (R04) with two-level probes prepared using a recently developed photonic multifunctional quantum cloner [Lemr et al., Phys. Rev. A 85, 050307(R) (2012)]. We demonstrated that our optimal cloning device with high-success rate makes the eavesdropping possible by hiding it in usual transmission losses. We believe that this experiment can stimulate the quest for other operational applications of quantum cloning.
We propose an extension of quantum key distribution based on encoding the key into quNits, i.e. quantum states in an N -dimensional Hilbert space. In our protocol, we adopt asymmetric measurement scheme resulting in an efficiency higher than previous protocols and a generalized Bell inequality [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 (2004) 130404] is employed to detect the presence of an eavesdropper Eve. We also derive the information gained by a potential eavesdropper Eve applying a cloning-based attack and the maximal error rate which measures the robustness of the protocol. The result shows that the security of our scheme increases with the dimension N .