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.     

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 Summation with Single Photons in Both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

In this paper, we employ single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom to design a quantum summation protocol. We assume that the third party, i.e. TP, is semi-honest in our protocol. That TP is semi-honest means TP executes the protocol loyally, keeps a record of all its intermediate computations and might try to steal the participants’ private inputs from the record, but he cannot be corrupted by the adversary. Participants can independently encode their private inputs on the polarization states and the spatial-mode states of single photons. Thus our protocol doubles the capacity of quantum communication compared with those based on single photons with only one degree of freedom. In addition, our protocol is feasible as 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. We also analyze its security in this paper.     

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.     

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.     

Deterministic nondestructive state analysis for polarization-spatial-time-bin hyperentanglement with cross-Kerr nonlinearity

We present a deterministic nondestructive hyperentangled Bell state analysis protocol for photons entangled in three degrees of freedom(DOFs),including polarization,spatial-mode,and time-bin DOFs.The polarization Bell state analyzer and spatial-mode Bell state analyzer are constructed by polarization parity-check quantum nondemolition detector(P-QND)and spatial-mode parity-check quantum nondemolition detector(S-QND)using cross-Kerr nonlinearity,respectively.The time-bin Bell state analyzer is constructed by the swap gate for polarization state and time-bin state of a photon(P-T swap gate)and P-QND.The Bell states analyzer for one DOF will not destruct the Bell states of other two DOFs,so the polarization-spatial-time-bin hyperentangled Bell states can be determinately distinguished without destruction.This deterministic nondestructive state analysis method has useful applications in quantum information protocols.     

Information Leakage Problem in Efficient Bidirectional Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Single Photons in Both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

The information leakage problem in the efficient bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol with single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom is pointed out. Next, a way to revise this protocol to a truly secure one is given. We hope people pay more attention to the information leakage problem in order to design truly secure quantum communication 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.     

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.     

Improving the Security of ‘High-Capacity Quantum Summation with Single Photons in both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom’

In 2014, Zhang et al. (Int J Theor Phys:53:933–941, 2014) proposed a secure multi-party quantum summation protocol based on single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. They claimed that the proposed protocol can efficiently help the involved participants to sum their secrets, and at the same time, each participant’s secret can be kept from being known by others. However, this study shows that Zhang et al.’s protocol suffers from the intercept-resend attack. To solve this problem, a modification is proposed here.

     

Nonlocal hyperconcentration on entangled photons using photonic module system

Entanglement distribution will inevitably be affected by the channel and environment noise. Thus distillation of maximal entanglement nonlocally becomes a crucial goal in quantum information. Here we illustrate that maximal hyperentanglement on nonlocal photons could be distilled using the photonic module and cavity quantum electrodynamics, where the photons are simultaneously entangled in polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom. The construction of the photonic module in a photonic band-gap structure is presented, and the operation of the module is utilized to implement the photonic nondestructive parity checks on the two degrees of freedom. We first propose a hyperconcentration protocol using two identical partially hyperentangled initial states with unknown coefficients to distill a maximally hyperentangled state probabilistically, and further propose a protocol by the assistance of an ancillary single photon prepared according to the known coefficients of the initial state. In the two protocols, the total success probability can be improved greatly by introducing the iteration mechanism, and only one of the remote parties is required to perform the parity checks in each round of iteration. Estimates on the system requirements and recent experimental results indicate that our proposal is realizable with existing or near-further technologies.     

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 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.     

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.     

Dynamic Multi-Party Quantum Private Comparison Protocol with Single Photons in Both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

A dynamic quantum private comparison protocol based on the single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom is proposed. In this protocol, any two parties of n(n ≥ 4) parties can compare their private information with the help of others n ? 2 parties. And any party can join in the protocol to take part in the comparison of n parties. Correctness analysis shows that the proposed protocol can be used to compare their information correctly. Security analysis shows that the proposed protocol can resist the general active attacks from an outside eavesdropper. And it can overcomes the problem of information leakage.     

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.     

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.     

General hyperentanglement concentration for polarizationspatial- time-bin multi-photon systems with linear optics

Hyperentanglement has attracted considerable attention recently because of its high-capacity for longdistance quantum communication. In this study, we present a hyperentanglement concentration protocol (hyper-ECP) for nonlocal three-photon systems in the polarization, spatial-mode, and timebin partially hyperentangled Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states using the Schmidt projection method. In our hyper-ECP, the three distant parties must perform the parity-check measurements on the polarization, spatial-mode, and time-bin degrees of freedom, respectively, using linear optical elements and Pockels cells, and only two identical nonlocal photon systems are required. This hyper-ECP can be directly extended to the N-photon hyperentangled GHZ states, and the success probability of this general hyper-ECP for a nonlocal N-photon system is the optimal one, regardless of the photon number N.     

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.     

Information Leakage in Efficient Bidirectional Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Single Photons in Both Polarization and Spatial-Mode Degrees of Freedom

Recently, Wang et al. presented a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication protocol with single photons in both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 54(10): 3443-3453, 2015). They claimed that their protocol was efficient and removed the drawback of information leakage. However, we found that the information leakage actually exists in their protocol. In this paper, we analyze Wang et al.’s protocol in detail. In addition, we propose an improvement to avoid the information leakage. The security of the improved protocol has also been discussed.