Quantum Secure Direct Communication and Quantum Sealed-Bid Auction with EPR Pairs

I present a new protocol for three-party quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) with a set of ordered M Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs. In the scheme, by performing two unitary operations and Bell state measurements, it is shown that the three legitimate parties can exchange their respectivesecret message simultaneously. Then I modify it for an experimentally feasible and secure quantum sealed-bid auction (QSBD) protocol. Furthermore, I also analyze the security of the protocol, and the scheme is proven to be secure against the intercept-and-resend attack, the disturbance attack and the entangled-and-measure attack.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Quantum Secure Direct Communication by Using Three-Dimensional Hyperentanglement

We propose two schemes for realizing quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) by using a set of ordered two-photon three-dimensional hyperentangled states entangled in two degrees of freedom (DOFs) as quantum information channels. In the first scheme, the photons from Bob to Alice are transmitted only once. After insuring the security of the quantum channels, Bob encodes the secret message on his photons. Then Alice performs single-photon two-DOF Bell bases measurements on her photons. This scheme has better security than former QSDC protocols. In the second scheme, Bob transmits photons to Alice twice. After insuring the security of the quantum channels, Bob encodes the secret message on his photons. Then Alice performs two-photon Bell bases measurements on each DOF. The scheme has more information capacity than former QSDC protocols.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

基于Bell态粒子和单光子混合的量子安全直接通信方案的信息泄露问题

最近,一种基于Bell态粒子和单光子混合的量子安全直接通信方案[物理学报65 230301(2016)]被提出.文章宣称一个量子态可以编码3比特经典信息,从而使得协议具有很高的信息传输效率.不幸的是,该协议存在信息泄露问题:编码在单光子上的3比特经典信息有2比特被泄露,而编码在Bell态上的3比特经典信息有1比特被泄露,所以它不是一个安全的直接量子通信方案.在保留原协议思想且尽可能少地更改原协议的基础上,我们提出一种改进的消息编码规则,从而解决信息泄露问题,使之成为一个高效、安全的量子通信协议.衷心希望研究者能对量子安全通信协议中信息泄露问题引起足够重视,设计真正安全的量子通信协议.     

Quantum secure direct communication and deterministic secure quantum communication

In this review article, we review the recent development of quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) and deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) which both are used to transmit secret message, including the criteria for QSDC, some interesting QSDC protocols, the DSQC protocols and QSDC network, etc. The difference between these two branches of quantum communication is that DSQC requires the two parties exchange at least one bit of classical information for reading out the message in each qubit, and QSDC does not. They are attractive because they are deterministic, in particular, the QSDC protocol is fully quantum mechanical. With sophisticated quantum technology in the future, the QSDC may become more and more popular. For ensuring the safety of QSDC with single photons and quantum information sharing of single qubit in a noisy channel, a quantum privacy amplification protocol has been proposed. It involves very simple CHC operations and reduces the information leakage to a negligible small level. Moreover, with the one-party quantum error correction, a relation has been established between classical linear codes and quantum one-party codes, hence it is convenient to transfer many good classical error correction codes to the quantum world. The one-party quantum error correction codes are especially designed for quantum dense coding and related QSDC protocols based on dense coding.      

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.     

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.     

A New Quantum Secure Direct Communication Protocol Using Decoherence-Free Subspace

A new quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol is proposed by using decoherence free subspace （DFS） to avoid insecurity of the present QSDC protocols in a quantum noise channel. This protocol makes it easily for Bob and Alice to find eavesdropping in channel because the collective dephasing noise disappears in DFS. The probability of successful attack by Eve in this protocol is smaller than in BB84 protocol. Thus this protocol realizes secure QSDC and is feasible with present-day technology.     

利用广义Bell态信道联合远程制备一个任意三量子比特态

研究了一个联合远程制备任意三量子比特态的方案。该方案利用广义的Bell态作为量子信道,两个发送者分别选择合适的测量基进行测量,然后利用经典信道把测量结果传送出去,接收者根据测量结果对自己手中的粒子采取适当的幺正操作,然后引入辅助粒子并进行选择性测量,就能概率性的得到想要制备的量子态。研究结果表明:利用不同形式的广义Bell态信道成功实现联合远程制备一个任意三量子比特态的概率是一样的,当量子信道处于最大纠缠态时,可以得到最大的成功概率。     

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.     

Fault tolerant two-step quantum secure direct communication protocol against collective noises

This work proposes two fault tolerant quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocols which are robust against two kinds of collective noises: the collective-dephasing noises and the collective-rotation noises, respectively. The two QSDC protocols are constructed from four-qubit DF states which consist of two logical qubits. The receiver simply performs two Bell state measurements (rather than four-qubit joint measurements) to obtain the secret message. The protocols have qubit effciency twice that of ...     

Bidirectional Quantum Secure Direct Communication Network Protocol with Hyperentanglement

We propose a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) network protocol with the hyperentanglment in both the spatial-mode ad 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. Compared with other QSDC network protocols, our QSDC network protocol has a higher capacity as each photon pair can carry 4 bits of information. Also, we discuss the security of our QSDC network protocol and its feasibility with current techniques.     

Measurement-device-independent quantum dialogue

Recently, measurement-device-independent quantum secure direct communication schemes were proposed by Niu et al. [Sci. Bull. 63 1345(2018)] and Zhou et al. [Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron. 63 230362(2020)]. Inspired by their ideas,in this paper, a measurement-device-independent quantum dialogue protocol based on entanglement is designed and proven to be secure. The advantage of this scheme is that it can not only allow two communicators to transmit secret messages between each other, making the application scenarios more extensive, but can also eliminate all the security loopholes related to the measurement device and information leakage. In terms of experimental implementation, the scheme mainly involves the preparation of entangled states, the preparation of single photons, quantum storage, Bell measurement and other technologies, all of which are mature at present, therefore, the scheme is feasible by using current technologies.     

基于旋转不变态的测量设备无关量子密钥分配协议研究

本文提出了一种基于旋转不变态的偏振无关测量设备量子密钥分配协议,既适用于偏振编码测量设备无关量子密钥分配系统,也应用于相位编码测量设备无关量子密钥分配系统的相干过程.通过在线偏振基进入信道传输前嵌入2块q玻片,使得在传输过程中将线偏振基转化为旋转不变的圆偏振基,而第三方对接收到的脉冲进行Bell态测量前,利用q玻片的算符可逆性,将圆偏振基还原为线偏振基进行测量,可以有效消除信道传输中偏振旋转导致的误码.本文分析了偏振无关的三诱骗态测量设备无关量子密钥分配系统的误码率,研究了密钥生成率与安全传输距离的关系,仿真结果表明,对于偏振编码测量设备无关量子密钥分配系统,该协议可以有效提高系统的最大安全通信距离,为实用的量子密钥分配实验提供了重要的理论参数.