Measurement-device-independent one-step quantum secure direct communication

The one-step quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) (Sci. Bull. 67, 367 (2022)) can effectively simplify QSDC's operation and reduce message loss. For enhancing its security under practical experimental condition, we propose two measurement-device-independent (MDI) one-step QSDC protocols, which can resist all possible attacks from imperfect measurement devices. In both protocols, the communication parties prepare identical polarization-spatial-mode two-photon hyperentangled states and construct the hyperentanglement channel by hyperentanglement swapping. The first MDI one-step QSDC protocol adopts the nonlinear-optical complete hyperentanglement Bell state measurement (HBSM) to construct the hyperentanglement channel, while the second protocol adopts the linear-optical partial HBSM. Then, the parties encode the photons in the polarization degree of freedom and send them to the third party for the hyperentanglement-assisted complete polarization Bell state measurement. Both protocols are unconditionally secure in theory. The simulation results show the MDI one-step QSDC protocol with complete HBSM attains the maximal communication distance of about 354 km. Our MDI one-step QSDC protocols may have potential applications in the future quantum secure communication field.     

A novel quantum information hiding protocol based on entanglement swapping of high-level Bell states

Using entanglement swapping of high-level Bell states, we first derive a covert layer between the secret message and the possible output results of the entanglement swapping between any two generalized Bell states, and then propose a novel high-efficiency quantum information hiding protocol based on the covert layer. In the proposed scheme, a covert channel can be built up under the cover of a high-level quantum secure direct communication(QSDC) channel for securely transmitting secret messages without consuming any auxiliary quantum state or any extra communication resource. It is shown that this protocol not only has a high embedding efficiency but also achieves a good imperceptibility as well as a high security.     

基于分组交换的量子通信网络传输协议及性能分析

量子纠缠交换能够建立可靠的量子远程传输信道, 实现量子态的远程传输. 然而, 基于纠缠交换的量子信道要求网络高度稳定, 否则会浪费大量纠缠资源. 为节省纠缠资源, 本文根据隐形传态理论, 提出了一种基于分组交换的量子通信网络传输协议, 建立了发送量子态所需的纠缠数目与所经过的路由器数、链路错误率的定量关系, 并与纠缠交换传输协议进行了比较. 仿真结果表明, 在链路错误率为0.1% 时, 分组传输协议所使用的纠缠数目少于纠缠交换的数目, 另外, 随着错误率的升高, 分组传输协议所需的纠缠数比纠缠交换协议明显减少. 由此可见, 基于分组交换的量子通信网络传输协议在网络不稳定时, 能够节省大量纠缠资源, 适用于链路不稳定的量子通信网络.     

Quantum steganography with a large payload based on dense coding and entanglement swapping of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states

A quantum steganography protocol with a large payload is proposed based on the dense coding and the entanglement swapping of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Its super quantum channel is formed by building up a hidden channel within the original quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) scheme. Based on the original QSDC, secret messages are transmitted by integrating the dense coding and the entanglement swapping of the GHZ states. The capacity of the super quantum channel achieves six bits per round covert communication, much higher than the previous quantum steganography protocols. Its imperceptibility is good, since the information and the secret messages can be regarded to be random or pseudo-random. Moreover, its security is proved to be reliable.     

Quantum steganography with large payload based on entanglement swapping of χ-type entangled states

In this paper, we firstly propose a new simple method to calculate entanglement swapping of χ-type entangled states, and then present a novel quantum steganography protocol with large payload. The new protocol adopts entanglement swapping to build up the hidden channel within quantum secure direct communication with χ-type entangled states for securely transmitting secret messages. Comparing with the previous quantum steganographies, the capacity of the hidden channel is much higher, which is increased to eight bits. Meanwhile, due to the quantum uncertainty theorem and the no-cloning theorem its imperceptibility is proved to be great in the analysis, and its security is also analyzed in detail, which is proved that intercept-resend attack, measurement-resend attack, ancilla attack, man-in-the-middle attack or even Dos(Denial of Service) attack couldn't threaten it. As a result, the protocol can be applied in various fields of quantum communication.     

Quantum secure direct communication by entangled qutrits and entanglement swapping

A protocol for quantum secure direct communication by using entangled qutrits and swapping quantum entanglement is proposed. In this protocol, a set of ordered two-qutrit entangled states is used as quantum information channels for sending secret messages directly. During the process of transmission of particles, the transmitted particles do not carry any secret messages and are transmitted only one time. The protocol has higher source capacity than protocols using usual two-dimensional Bell-basis states as quantum channel. The security is ensured by the unitary operations randomly performed on all checking groups before the particle sequence is transmitted and the application of entanglement swapping.     

Novel quantum steganography with large payload

In this paper, we propose a novel quantum steganography protocol based on quantum secure direct communication. By using entanglement swapping of Bell states, the protocol builds up hidden channel within the improved ping-pong protocol to transmit secret messages. Comparing with the previous quantum steganographies, its capacity of hidden channel is increased to four times, and the superposition channel can transmit more information than the original quantum channel. Imperceptibility of the hidden channel in this protocol is good, since its possibility of detection can be arbitrarily reduced by increasing the Bell state's number. Security of the secret messages is also proved to be reliable regardless of whether the hidden channel has been detected or not. In addition, our protocol has various applications in quantum communication.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of a multi-user quantum key distribution protocol

A multi-user quantum key distribution protocol [C.H. Hong et al., Opt. Commun. 283 (2010) 2644] was proposed, in which any two among n users of the system can communicate with each other, even though there is no direct quantum channel between them. Nevertheless, we show that the mediator Trent, who performs entanglement swapping in this protocol, has a way to eavesdrop on the communication between the two users without being detected. We also give an effective method to solve the security leak.     

Quantum-Error-Rejection for Hyperentanglement Transmission without Calibrated Reference Frames

In quantum communication, the channel noise and the misalignment of the reference frames between the communication parties will lead to the failure of quantum state transmission. Here an alignment-free spatial-polarization hyperentanglement transmission scheme is provided for hyperentangled photons. In this scheme, before the spatial-polarization hyperentanglement is transmitted through the fiber channel, it is first encoded as a time-bin entanglement with the same polarization. After the photons pass through the noise channel, the polarization errors caused by reference frames misalignment and channel noise can be corrected by time-bin entanglement. In principle, by implementing this scheme, the communication parties can share the original hyperentangled state, and the success probability can approach unity. The scheme is robust to random channel noise and reference frames misalignment, and the decoherence effect caused by the misalignment of the reference frames between the communication parties can be completely suppressed by implementing this scheme.     

Quantum Communication Scheme Using Non-symmetric Quantum Channel

A theoretical quantum communication scheme based on entanglement swapping and superdense coding is proposed with a 3-dimensional Bell state and 2-dimensional Bell state function as quantum channel. quantum key distribution and quantum secure direct communication can be simultaneously accomplished in the scheme. The scheme is secure and has high source capacity. At last, we generalize the quantum communication scheme to d-dimensional quantum channel.     

Distributed wireless quantum communication networks

The distributed wireless quantum communication network （DWQCN） ha~ a distributed network topology and trans- mits information by quantum states. In this paper, we present the concept of the DWQCN and propose a system scheme to transfer quantum states in the DWQCN. The system scheme for transmitting information between any two nodes in the DWQCN includes a routing protocol and a scheme for transferring quantum states. The routing protocol is on-demand and the routing metric is selected based on the number of entangled particle pairs. After setting up a route, quantum tele- portation and entanglement swapping are used for transferring quantum states. Entanglement swapping is achieved along with the process of routing set up and the acknowledgment packet transmission. The measurement results of each entan- glement swapping are piggybacked with route reply packets or acknowledgment packets. After entanglement swapping, a direct quantum link between source and destination is set up and quantum states are transferred by quantum teleportation. Adopting this scheme, the measurement results of entanglement swapping do not need to be transmitted specially, which decreases the wireless transmission cost and transmission delay.     

利用纠缠GHZ态实现受控的量子确定性安全通讯(英文)

提出一个受控的量子确定性安全通信方案,在通信过程中,纠缠GHZ态用作量子信道,秘密信息的编码和破解是通过受控的量子纠缠交换和局域酉变换实现的.此方案是安全的.关于此方案安全性的证明和两步方案[Phys.Rev.A 68 042317]的安全性是一样的.此方案也可以推广到有多方控制者参与的情形.     

光子两自由度超并行量子计算与超纠缠态操控

光子系统在量子信息处理和传输过程中有非常重要的应用. 譬如, 利用光子与原子(或人工原子)之间的相互作用, 可以完成信息的安全传输、存储和快速的并行计算处理等任务. 光子系统具有多个自由度, 如极化、空间模式、轨道角动量、时间-能量、频率等自由度. 光子系统的多个自由度可以同时应用于量子信息处理过程. 超并行量子计算利用光子系统多个自由度的光量子态同时进行量子并行计算, 使量子计算具有更强的并行性, 且需要的量子资源少, 更能抵抗光子数损耗等噪声的影响. 多个自由度同时存在纠缠的光子系统量子态称为超纠缠态, 它能够提高量子通信的容量与安全性, 辅助完成一些重要的量子通信任务. 在本综述中, 我们简要介绍了光子系统两自由度量子态在量子信息中的一些新应用, 包括超并行量子计算、超纠缠态分析、超纠缠浓缩和纯化三个部分.     

Entanglement-assisted quantum logic gates for two remote qubits

We propose a protocol to realize quantum logic gates for two remote qubits via entanglement swapping. According to the scheme of quantum repeater presented by H.-J. Briegel et al., we can complete long-distance communication and computation. Compared with previous schemes through noisy channels, our protocol can overcome the limitation that error probability scales exponentially with the length of the channel. We illustrate this protocol in cavity QED system, but the idea can also be realized in other physical systems.     

Controlled Quantum Secure Direct Communication by?Using Four Particle Cluster States

We present a controlled quantum secure direct communication protocol by using cluster states via swapping quantum entanglement and local unitary operation. In the present scheme, the sender transmit the secret message to the receiver directly and the secret message can only be recovered by the receiver under the permission of the controller.     

Controlled quantum secure direct communication using a non-symmetric quantum channel with quantum superdense coding

We present a controlled quantum secure direct communication protocol that uses a 2-dimensional Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled state and a 3-dimensional Bell-basis state and employs the high-dimensional quantum superdense coding, local collective unitary operations and entanglement swapping. The proposed protocol is secure and of high source capacity. It can effectively protect the communication against a destroying-travel-qubit-type attack. With this protocol, the information transmission is greatly increased. This protocol can also be modified, so that it can be used in a multi-party control system.     

Entanglement concentration and teleportation of multipartite entangled states in an ion trap

We propose an effective scheme for the entanglement concentration of a four-particle state via entanglement swapping in an ion trap. Taking the maximally entangled state after concentration as a quantum channel, we can faithfully and determinatively teleport quantum entangled states from Alice to Bob without the joint Bell-state measurement. In the process of constructing the quantum channel, we adopt entanglement swapping to avoid the decrease of entanglement during the distribution of particles. Thus our scheme provides a new prospect for quantum teleportation over a longer distance. Furthermore, the success probability of our scheme is 1.0.     

Measurement-Based Hyperentanglement Distillation for Lossy and Distortion Photon State

The information content of a photon system can be extended by hyperentanglement, but the quality of hyperentanglement will be decreased by the complicated transmission loss and channel noise in quantum information processing. Here, an efficient measurement-based hyperentanglement distillation protocol (MB-HDP) is presented for depressing the effects of complicated transmission loss and channel noise on hyperentanglement. In the MB-HDP, the nonlocal lossy and distortion photon states are coupled to local hyperentangled Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states using parity measurement and qubit amplification device, and the decoherence caused by bit-flip (phase-flip) error, diverse transmission coefficients and transmission loss can be depressed by the successful measurement results, which can increase the quality of nonlocal hyperentangled photon state. This MB-HDP broadens the application scope of hyperentanglement distillation to nonlocal lossy and distortion photon state with a lower degree of entanglement. In addition, the MB-HDP can further improve the quality of nonlocal hyperentangled photon state by coupling multiple copies of lossy and distortion hyperentangled photon state with local hyperentangled GHZ states. This work demonstrates the ability of measurement-based method for ensuring the quality of nonlocal hyperentanglement, which can improve the integrity and capacity of long-distance quantum information processing.     

Refined hyperentanglement purification of two-photon systems for high-capacity quantum communication with cavity-assisted interaction

Hyperentanglement, defined as the entanglement in multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) of a photonic quantum system, has attracted much attention recently as it can improve the channel capacity of quantum communication largely. Here we present a refined hyperentanglement purification protocol (hyper-EPP) for two-photon systems in mixed hyperentangled states in both the spatial-mode and polarization DOFs, assisted by cavity quantum electrodynamics. By means of the spatial (polarization) quantum state transfer process, the quantum states that are discarded in the previous hyper-EPPs can be preserved. That is, the spatial (polarization) state of a four-photon system with high fidelity can be transformed into another four-photon system with low fidelity, not disturbing its polarization (spatial) state, which makes this hyper-EPP take the advantage of possessing a higher efficiency.