A two-step quantum secure direct communication protocol with hyperentanglement

We propose a two-step quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol with hyperentanglement in both the spatial-mode and the polarization degrees of freedom of photon pairs which can in principle be produced with a beta barium borate crystal. The secret message can be encoded on the photon pairs with unitary operations in these two degrees of freedom independently. This QSDC protocol has a higher capacity than the original two-step QSDC protocol as each photon pair can carry 4 bits of information. Compared with the QSDC protocol based on hyperdense coding, this QSDC protocol has the immunity to Trojan horse attack strategies with the process for determining the number of the photons in each quantum signal as it is a one-way quantum communication protocol.     

High-capacity quantum secure direct communication with two-photon six-qubit hyperentangled states

This study proposes the first high-capacity quantum secure direct communication(QSDC) with two-photon six-qubit hyperentangled Bell states in two longitudinal momentum and polarization degrees of freedom(DOFs) of photon pairs, which can be generated using two 0.5 mm-thick type-I β barium borate crystal slabs aligned one behind the other and an eight-hole screen. The secret message can be independently encoded on the photon pairs with 64 unitary operations in all three DOFs. This protocol has a higher capacity than previous QSDC protocols because each photon pair can carry 6 bits of information, not just 2 or 4 bits.Our QSDC protocol decreases the influence of decoherence from environment noise by exploiting the decoy photons to check the security of the transmission of the first photon sequence. Compared with two-way QSDC protocols, our QSDC protocol is immune to an attack by an eavesdropper using Trojan horse attack strategies because it is a one-way quantum communication.The QSDC protocol has good applications in the future quantum communication because of all these features.     

Three-party Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Single Photons in both Polarization and Spatial-mode Degrees of Freedom

We present an efficient three-party quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol with single photos in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. The three legal parties’ messages can be encoded on the polarization and the spatial-mode states of single photons independently with desired unitary operations. A party can obtain the other two parties’ messages simultaneously through a quantum channel. Because no extra public information is transmitted in the classical channels, the drawback of information leakage or classical correlation does not exist in the proposed scheme. Moreover, the comprehensive security analysis shows that the presented QSDC network protocol can defend the outsider eavesdropper’s several sorts of attacks. Compared with the single photons with only one degree of freedom, our protocol based on the single photons in two degrees of freedom has higher capacity. Since the preparation and the measurement of single photon quantum states in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom are available with current quantum techniques, the proposed protocol is practical.     

High-Capacity Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Single Photons in Both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

We present a high-capacity quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol with single photons in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom. With a single photon traveling forth and back from the receiver to the sender, it can carry 2 bits of information as the sender can encode his message on both the polarization states and the spatial-mode states of single photons independently. Moreover, our QSDC protocol is feasible as the preparation and the measurement of a single-photon quantum state in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom is not difficult with current technology.     

Three-step three-party quantum secure direct communication

We propose a three-party quantum secure direct communication(QSDC) protocol with hyperentanglement in both spatial-mode and polarization degrees of freedom. The secret message can be encoded independently with desired unitary operations in two degrees of freedom. In this protocol, a party can synchronously obtain the other two parties' messages. Compared with previous three-party QSDC protocols, our protocol has several advantages. First, the single photons in our protocol are only required to transmit for three times. This advantage makes this protocol simple and useful. Second, Alice and Bob can send different secret messages to Charlie, respectively. Finally, with hyperentanglement, this protocol has a higher information capacity than other protocols.     

Measurement-device-independent quantum secure direct communication

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)is a unique technique,which supports the secure transmission of confidential information directly through a quantum channel without the need for a secret key and for ciphertext.Hence this secure communication protocol fundamentally differs from its conventional counterparts.In this article,we report the first measurement-deviceindependent(MDI)QSDC protocol relying on sequences of entangled photon pairs and single photons.Explicitly,it eliminates the security loopholes associated with the measurement device.Additionally,this MDI technique is capable of doubling the communication distance of its conventional counterpart operating without using our MDI technique.We also conceive a protocol associated with linear optical Bell-basis measurements,where only two of the four Bell-basis states could be measured.When the number of qubits in a sequence reduces to 1,the MDI-QSDC protocol degenerates to a deterministic MDI quantum key distribution protocol.     

High-Capacity Quantum Secret Sharing with Hyperdense Coding Assisted by Hyperentangled Photon Pairs

We presents a high-capacity three-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol with a sequence of photon pairs in hyperentangled Bell states in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom. In our scheme, the boss Alice prepares a sequence of photon pairs in hyperentangled Bell states and divides them into two photon sequences which are sent the two agents, respectively. Alice exploits four subsets of decoy photons to assure the security of the photon transmission between her and her agents. The present QSS scheme has the advantage of having a high channel capacity as each photon pair can carry 4 bits of secret message in principle, two times of that by Deng et al. (Phys. Lett. A 372: 1957, 2008). We give out the setups for the preparation of the photon pairs in hyperentangled Bell states with a beta barium borate crystal and the manipulation of the photons with linear optical elements. It will be shown that our QSS protocol is feasible with current experimental technology.     

量子直接通信

量子直接通信是量子通信中的一个重要分支, 它是一种不需要事先建立密钥而直接传输机密信息的新型通信模式. 本综述将介绍量子直接通信的基本原理, 回顾量子直接通信的发展历程, 从最早的高效量子直接通信协议、两步量子直接通信模型、量子一次一密直接通信模型等, 到抗噪声的量子直接通信模型以及基于单光子多自由度量子态及超纠缠态的量子直接通信模型, 最后介绍量子直接通信的研究现状并展望其发展未来.     

一种基于诱骗态的广域量子安全直接通信网络方案

提出了一种基于诱骗态的广域量子安全直接通信网络方案.在每一个局域网中设置一个服务器负责量子态的产生和测量,从而提高了通信距离;将诱骗态的思想引入量子安全直接通信,采用不同的强度发送光脉冲,能够克服光子数目分割攻击,从而提高通信的安全性;根据信道参量估计了不同通信距离的通过率,为信道编码提供了依据.对所提方案进行了安全性分析,结果表明此方案能够实现远距离量子安全直接通信.     

Novel Quantum Virtual Private Network Scheme for PON via Quantum Secure Direct Communication

Two quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocols with quantum identification (QI) based on passive optical network (PON) architecture are proposed. One QSDC protocol can be implemented between two different optical network units just with simple configurations of PON by optical line terminal when they are in the same virtual private network after optical line terminal performing QI to the optical network units in the given PON architecture. The other QSDC protocol is also implemented between any two legitimated users in the virtual private network but with considerable reduction of workload of the optical line terminal. The security analysis shows that the proposed QSDC schemes with quantum identification are unconditionally secure and allow the legitimate users to exchange their secret information efficiently and to realize a quantum virtual private network in the PON networks ultimately.     

Efficient Quantum Secure Direct Communication Using the Orbital Angular Momentum of Single Photons

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is to transmit information directly through quantum channels without generating secret keys. The efficiencies of QSDC rely on the capacity of qubits. Exploiting orbital angular momentum of single photons, we proposed a high-capacity one-time pad QSDC protocol. The information is encoded on the Hermite-Gauss mode and transmitted directly on the Laguerre-Gauss mode of the photon pluses. The proposed system provides a high coding space, and the proposed protocol is robust against collective-dephasing channel noise.     

Robust Quantum Secure Communication with Spatial Quantum States of Single Photons

The polarization quantum states of photon systems are fragile to the channel noise. However, recent experiments showed that the spatial quantum states of photon systems are robust. Recently, Ren et al. proposed a robust quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol with spatial entanglement (Ren et al., Eur. Phys. J. D 67:30, 2013). Here we proposed a robust QSDC protocol and a robust three-party quantum secret sharing protocol with the four nonorthogonal spatial quantum states of a sequence of single photons, respectively. Both these two quantum secure communication protocols have the advantage of having a robust character and not increasing the difficulty of their implementations in experiment, compared with almost all the existing quantum secure communication protocols which are based on the polarization quantum states of photon systems. Moreover, they are more feasible than the QSDC protocol by Ren et al. as they do not require Bell-state measurements.     

Faithful quantum secure direct communication protocol against collective noise

An improved quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol is proposed in this paper.Blocks of entangled photon pairs are transmitted in two steps in which secret messages are transmitted directly.The single logical qubits and unitary operations under decoherence free subspaces are presented and the generalized Bell states are constructed which are immune to the collective noise.Two steps of qubit transmission are used in this protocol to guarantee the security of communication.The security of the protocol against various attacks are discussed.     

High-Capacity Three-Party Quantum Secret Sharing with Single Photons in Both the Polarization and the Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

We present a high-capacity three-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol with a sequence of single photons in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom. By inserting the boss Alice into the middle position between the two agents Bob and Charlie, our QSS protocol is secure in theory. The boss Alice chooses some unitary operations to encode her information on the single photons. It is interesting to point out the fact that Alice does not change the bases of the single photons which are used to carry the useful information about the private key, which improves its success probability for obtaining a private key. Compared with the QSS protocol by Zhou et al. (Chin. Phys. Lett. 24, 2181 (2007)), our QSS protocol has a higher capacity without increasing the difficulty of its implementation in experiment as each correlated photon can carry two bits of useful information. Compared with those QSS protocols based on entangled photon pairs and Bell-state measurements, our QSS protocol is more feasible as it does not require the complete Bell-state analysis which is not easy with linear optics. We give out the setup for the implementation of our QSS protocol with linear optical elements.     

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.     

High-Capacity Three-Party Quantum Secret Sharing With Hyperentanglement

We presents a novel scheme for high-capacity three-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) with the hyperentanglement in both the polarization and the spatial-mode degrees of freedom of photon pairs. The boss Alice need only prepare a sequence of photon pairs and some decoy photons. Her two agents measure their photons received from the boss Alice with two bases by choosing two unsymmetrical probabilities. The present QSS scheme has a high capacity as each pair can carry 2 bits of information, several times as other QSS schemes. Moreover, our setups with linear optical elements show that our QSS scheme does not increase the difficulty of its implementation in experiment and it is feasible with current techniques.     

A quantum secure direct communication scheme based on intermediate-basis

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is a method of communication that transmits secret information directly through a quantum channel. This paper proposes a two-step QSDC scheme based on intermediate-basis, in which the intermediate-basis Einstein−Podolsky−Rosen (EPR) pairs can assist to detect channel security and help encode information. Specifically, the intermediate-basis EPR pairs reduce the probability of Eve choosing the correct measurement basis in the first step, enhancing the security of the system. Moreover, they encode information together with information EPR pairs to improve the transmission efficiency in the second step. We consider the security of the protocol under coherent attack when Eve takes different dimensions of the auxiliary system. The simulation results show that intermediate-basis EPR pairs can lower the upper limit of the amount of information that Eve can steal in both attack scenarios. Therefore, the proposed protocol can ensure that the legitimate parties get more confidential information and improve the transmission efficiency.     

Quantum secure direct communication network with Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen pairs

We discuss the four requirements for a real point-to-point quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) first, and then present two efficient QSDC network schemes with an N ordered Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen pairs. Any one of the authorized users can communicate another one on the network securely and directly.     

基于单光子双量子态的确定性安全量子通信

量子通信是量子科学技术的一个重要研究领域,是一种利用量子力学原理,能够在合法各方之间安全地传输私密信息的通信方式.基于单光子的确定性安全量子通信通常需要在发送方和接收方之间来回两次传输单光子态,并利用局域幺正变换加载信息.本文提出了一种单向传输单光子态的确定性安全量子通信方案.发送方利用单光子的极化和time-bin两自由度构成的两组共轭基矢量来编码经典逻辑比特.接收方通过设计合适的测量装置可以在发送方辅助下确定性地获取比特信息并感知窃听,从而实现信息的确定性安全传输.另外,我们的协议使用线性光学元件和单光子探测器,可以在当前的量子通信装置上实现.     

An efficient quantum secure direct communication scheme with authentication

In this paper an efficient quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) scheme with authentication is presented, which is based on quantum entanglement and polarized single photons. The present protocol uses Einstein--Podolsky--Rosen (EPR) pairs and polarized single photons in batches. A particle of the EPR pairs is retained in the sender's station, and the other is transmitted forth and back between the sender and the receiver, similar to the `ping--pong' QSDC protocol. According to the shared information beforehand, these two kinds of quantum states are mixed and then transmitted via a quantum channel. The EPR pairs are used to transmit secret messages and the polarized single photons used for authentication and eavesdropping check. Consequently, because of the dual contributions of the polarized single photons, no classical information is needed. The intrinsic efficiency and total efficiency are both 1 in this scheme as almost all of the instances are useful and each EPR pair can be used to carry two bits of information.