Ghost imaging by intense multimode twin beam

We present what is to our knowledge the first experimental implementation of a ghost imaging protocol based on an intense multimode spontaneous parametric down-conversion process, that is a PDC starting from vacuum. Temporal and spatial properties of the quantum field used in the protocol are also discussed.     

Balancing four-state continuous-variable quantum key distribution with linear optics cloning machine

We show that the secret key generation rate can be balanced with the maximum secure distance of four-state continuous-variable quantum key distribution(CV-QKD) by using the linear optics cloning machine(LOCM). Benefiting from the LOCM operation, the LOCM-tuned noise can be employed by the reference partner of reconciliation to achieve higher secret key generation rates over a long distance. Simulation results show that the LOCM operation can flexibly regulate the secret key generation rate and the maximum secure distance and improve the performance of four-state CV-QKD protocol by dynamically tuning parameters in an appropriate range.     

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution of multiple degrees of freedom of a single photon

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution(MDI-QKD)provides us a powerful approach to resist all attacks at detection side.Besides the unconditional security,people also seek for high key generation rate,but MDI-QKD has relatively low key generation rate.In this paper,we provide an efficient approach to increase the key generation rate of MDI-QKD by adopting multiple degrees of freedom(DOFs)of single photons to generate keys.Compared with other high-dimension MDI-QKD protocols encoding in one DOF,our protocol is more flexible,for our protocol generating keys in independent subsystems and the detection failure or error in a DOF not affecting the information encoding in other DOFs.Based on above features,our MDI-QKD protocol may have potential application in future quantum comniunication field.     

Security of the Decoy State Two-Way Quantum Key Distribution with Finite Resources

The quantum key distribution(QKD) allows two parties to share a secret key by typically making use of a one-way quantum channel However,the two-way QKD has its own unique advantages,which means the two-way QKD has become a focus recently.To improve the practical performance of the two-way QKD,we present a security analysis of a two-way QKD protocol based on the decoy method with heralded single-photon sources(HSPSs).We make use of two approaches to calculate the yield and the quantum bit error rate of single-photon and two-photon pulses.Then we present the secret key generation rate based on the GLLP formula.The numerical simulation shows that the protocol with HSPSs has an advantage in the secure distance compared with weak coherent state sources.In addition,we present the final secret key generation rate of the LM05 protocol with finite resources by considering the statistical fluctuation of the yield and the error rate.     

Security of Y-00 under heterodyne measurement and fast correlation attack

We provide a security analysis of the Y-00 protocol under heterodyne measurement and correlation attack. We show that the secrecy of the data encryption scheme is extremely sensitive to the running-key generation process. In many situations our simple attack succeeds in recovering the initial shared secret key. Our simulation results suggest that a truly secure implementation of the protocol should take into account the effective key generation method.     

A practical two-way system of quantum key distribution with untrusted source

The most severe problem of a two-way "plug-and-play" (p & p) quantum key distribution system is that the source can be controlled by the eavesdropper. This kind of source is defined as an üntrusted source". This paper discusses the effects of the fluctuation of internal transmittance on the final key generation rate and the transmission distance. The security of the standard BB84 protocol, one-decoy state protocol, and weak+vacuum decoy state protocol, with untrusted sources and the fluctuation of internal transmittance are studied. It is shown that the one-decoy state is sensitive to the statistical fluctuation but weak+vacuum decoy state is only slightly affected by the fluctuation. It is also shown that both the maximum secure transmission distance and final key generation rate are reduced when Alice's laboratory transmittance fluctuation is considered.     

The Decoy-State Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution with Heralded Single-Photon Source

Based on heralded single-photon source (HSPS), a decoy-state measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol is proposed in this paper. The MDI-QKD protocol mainly uses orbital angular momentum (OAM) states and pulse position modulation (PPM) technology to realize the coding of the signal states in heralded single-photon source. The three-intensity decoy states are used to avoid the attacks against the light source. Moreover, the formula of key generation rate is given by computing the lower bound of the yield of single-photon pairs and the upper bound of the error rate of single-photon pairs. Numerical simulation shows that the new MDI-QKD protocol has high key generation rate and low error rate. Moreover, the secure communication distance can be up to 450 km.

     

Free-space measurement-device-independent quantum-key-distribution protocol using decoy states with orbital angular momentum

In this paper, we propose a measurement-device-independent quantum-key-distribution(MDI-QKD) protocol using orbital angular momentum(OAM) in free space links, named the OAM-MDI-QKD protocol. In the proposed protocol,the OAM states of photons, instead of polarization states, are used as the information carriers to avoid the reference frame alignment, the decoy-state is adopted to overcome the security loophole caused by the weak coherent pulse source, and the high efficient OAM-sorter is adopted as the measurement tool for Charlie to obtain the output OAM state. Here, Charlie may be an untrusted third party. The results show that the authorized users, Alice and Bob, could distill a secret key with Charlie's successful measurements, and the key generation performance is slightly better than that of the polarization-based MDI-QKD protocol in the two-dimensional OAM cases. Simultaneously, Alice and Bob can reduce the number of flipping the bits in the secure key distillation. It is indicated that a higher key generation rate performance could be obtained by a high dimensional OAM-MDI-QKD protocol because of the unlimited degree of freedom on OAM states. Moreover,the results show that the key generation rate and the transmission distance will decrease as the growth of the strength of atmospheric turbulence(AT) and the link attenuation. In addition, the decoy states used in the proposed protocol can get a considerable good performance without the need for an ideal source.     

基于伪态协议的量子密钥分配系统研究

采用包含两个伪态和一个信号态的双伪态协议分析了量子密钥分配系统的性能,比较了双伪态（真空态—弱伪态）和单伪态协议条件下密钥生成率与通信距离的关系,分析了信号态的强度、量子比特误码率、单光子的增益和单光子的误码率对系统密钥生成率的影响,得出密钥生成率的最优化条件,为实现实用安全的量子密钥分配系统奠定理论基础. 关键词： 伪态协议 量子密钥生成率 量子比特误码率     

复合量子密钥分发系统双速协议及其安全性分析

基于真空光速c是极限信号速度这一基本假设,提出了复合量子密钥分发(QKD)系统和双速协议,并证明双速协议的安全性与原BB84协议的安全性相同.结果表明,双速协议在将量子密钥生成效率从50%提高到100%的同时,还降低了窃听者Eve可能得到的信息量.双速协议由于打破了公开讨论之前Bob和Eve的对等地位,使QKD在概念上有了明显的改进,使协议基的选择空间有了本质性的扩充.具体给出了三个双速协议的实例,并详细分析了它们在截取重发攻击下的安全性 关键词： 量子密码 光纤量子密钥分发 双速协议     

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with hyper-encoding

Measurement device-independent quantum key distribution(MDI-QKD) protocols are immune to all possible attacks on the photon detectors during quantum communication, but their key generation rates are low compared with those of other QKD schemes.Increasing each individual photon's channel capacity is an efficient way to increase the key generation rate, and high-dimensional(HD) encoding is a powerful tool for increasing the channel capacity of photons. In this paper, we propose an HD MDI-QKD protocol with qudits hyper-encoded in spatial mode and polarization degrees of freedom(DOFs). In the proposed protocol, keys can be generated using the spatial mode and polarization DOFs simultaneously. The proposed protocol is unconditionally secure,even for weak coherent pulses with decoy states. The proposed MDI-QKD protocol may be useful for future quantum secure communication applications.     

Experimental extraction of secure correlations from a noisy private state

We report experimental generation of a noisy entangled four-photon state that exhibits a separation between the secure key contents and distillable entanglement, a hallmark feature of the recently established quantum theory of private states. The privacy analysis, based on the full tomographic reconstruction of the prepared state, is utilized in a proof-of-principle key generation. The inferiority of distillation-based strategies to extract the key is exposed by an implementation of an entanglement distillation protocol for the produced state.     

New protocols for non-orthogonal quantum key distribution

Combining the passive decoy-state idea with the active decoy-state idea, a non-orthogonal (SARG04) decoy-state protocol with one vacuum and two weak decoy states is introduced based on a heralded pair coherent state photon source for quantum key distribution. Two special cases of this protocol are deduced, i.e., a one-vacuum-and-one-weak-decoy-state protocol and a one-weak-decoy-state protocol. In these protocols, the sender prepares decoy states actively, which avoids the crude estimation of parameters in the SARG04 passive decoy-state method. With the passive decoy-state idea, the detection events on Bob’s side that are non-triggered on Alice’s side are not discarded, but used to estimate the fractions of single-photon and two-photon pulses, which offsets the limitation of the detector’s low efficiency and overcomes the shortcoming that the performance of the active decoy-state protocol critically depends on the efficiency of detector. The simulation results show that the combination of the active and passive decoy-state ideas increases the key generation rate. With a one-vacuum-and-two-weak-decoy-state protocol, one can achieve a key generation rate that is close to the theoretical limit of an infinite decoy-state protocol. The performance of the other two protocols is a little less than with the former, but the implementation is easier. Under the same condition of implementation, higher key rates can be obtained with our protocols than with existing methods.     

Measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing with hyper-encoding

Quantum secret sharing (QSS) is a typical multi-party quantum communication mode, in which the key sender splits a key into several parts and the participants can obtain the key by cooperation. Measurement-device-independent quantum secret sharing (MDI-QSS) is immune to all possible attacks from measurement devices and can greatly enhance QSS's security in practical applications. However, previous MDI-QSS's key generation rate is relatively low. Here, we adopt the polarization-spatial-mode hyper-encoding technology in the MDI-QSS, which can increase single photon's channel capacity. Meanwhile, we use the cross-Kerr nonlinearity to realize the complete hyper-entangled Greenberger—Horne—Zeilinger state analysis. Both above factors can increase MDI-QSS's key generation rate by about 10³. The proposed hyper-encoded MDI-QSS protocol may be useful for future multiparity quantum communication applications.     

Structured codes improve the Bennett-Brassard-84 quantum key rate

A central goal in information theory and cryptography is finding simple characterizations of optimal communication rates under various restrictions and security requirements. Ideally, the optimal key rate for a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol would be given by a single-letter formula involving optimization over a single use of an effective channel. We explore the possibility of such a formula for the simplest and most widely used QKD protocol, Bennnett-Brassard-84 with one-way classical postprocessing. We show that a conjectured single-letter formula is false, uncovering a deep ignorance about good private codes and exposing unfortunate complications in the theory of QKD. These complications are not without benefit-with added complexity comes better key rates than previously thought possible. The threshold for secure key generation improves from a bit error rate of 0.124 to 0.129.     

Security of decoy states QKD with finite resources against collective attacks

The number of transmitted signals in practical quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is always finite. We discuss the security of decoy states QKD protocol with finite resources by considering the statistical fluctuation for the yield and error rate of the quantum state in different sources of pulses (signal sources and decoy sources). The number of exchanged quantum signals vs positive key generation rate is given with experiment results.     

Quantum key distribution without reference frame alignment: Exploiting photon orbital angular momentum

We present a new implementation of the BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol that employs a d-dimensional Hilbert space spanned by spatial modes of the propagating beam that have a definite value of orbital angular momentum. Each photon carries log d bits of information, increasing the key generation rate of the protocol. The states used in the transmission part of the protocol are invariant under rotations about the propagation direction, making this implementation independent of the alignment between the reference frames of the sender and receiver, and hence appealing for free space QKD. The protocol still works when these reference frames rotate with respect to each other.     

Multiparty Quantum Key Agreement with Four-Qubit Symmetric W State

Based on four-qubit symmetric W state, the delayed measurement, decoy photos method, block transmission technique and the dense coding method, a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol is proposed. By utilizing the delayed measurement and decoy photos method, the fairness and security of the protocol are ensured. That is, the final generation key can be got fairly by m participants and the outside eavesdropper (includes Trojan-horse attacks, Measure-resend attack, Intercept-resend attack and Entangle-measure attack) and the dishonest participants attacks can be resisted in this protocol. By utilizing block transmission technique and the dense coding method, the efficiency of the protocol is improved. The efficiency analysis shows that the proposed protocol is more efficient than other multi-party QKA protocols.     

Experimental quantum key distribution with decoy states

To increase dramatically the distance and the secure key generation rate of quantum key distribution (QKD), the idea of quantum decoys--signals of different intensities--has recently been proposed. Here, we present the first experimental implementation of decoy state QKD. By making simple modifications to a commercial quantum key distribution system, we show that a secure key generation rate of 165 bit/s, which is 1/4 of the theoretical limit, can be obtained over 15 km of a telecommunication fiber. We also show that with the same experimental parameters, not even a single bit of secure key can be extracted with a non-decoy-state protocol. Compared to building single photon sources, decoy state QKD is a much simpler method for increasing the distance and key generation rate of unconditionally secure QKD.     

Three-party reference frame independent quantum key distribution protocol

We present a three-party reference frame independent quantum key distribution protocol which can be implemented without any alignment of reference frames between the sender and the receiver. The protocol exploits entangled states to establish a secret key among three communicating parties. We derive the asymptotic key rate for the proposed protocol against collective attacks and perform a finite-size key security analysis against general attacks in the presence of statistical fluctuations. We investigate the impact of reference frame misalignment on the stability of our protocol, and we obtain a transmission distance of 180 km, 200 km, and 230 km for rotation of reference frames β=π/6, β=π/8 and β=0, respectively. Remarkably, our results demonstrate that our proposed protocol is not heavily affected by an increase in misalignment of reference frames as the achievable transmission distances are still comparable to the case where there is no misalignment in reference frames (when β=0). We also simulate the performance of our protocol for a fixed number of signals. Our results demonstrate that the protocol can achieve an effective key generation rate over a transmission distance of about 120 km with realistic 10⁷ finite data signals and approximately achieve 195 km with 10⁹ signals. Moreover, our proposed protocol is robust against noise in the quantum channel and achieves a threshold error rate of 22.7%.