Distributing Secret Keys with Quantum Continuous Variables: Principle, Security and Implementations

By Eleni Diamanti, Anthony Leverrier. Entropy, 2015

322 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The ability to distribute secret keys between two parties with information-theoretic security, that is regardless of the capacities of a malevolent eavesdropper, is one of the most celebrated results in the field of quantum information processing and communication. Indeed, quantum key distribution illustrates the power of encoding information on the quantum properties of light and has far-reaching implications in high-security applications. Today, quantum key distribution systems operate in real-world conditions and are commercially available. As with most quantum information protocols, quantum key distribution was first designed for qubits, the individual quanta of information. However, the use of quantum continuous variables for this task presents important advantages with respect to qubit-based protocols, in particular from a practical point of view, since it allows for simple implementations that require only standard telecommunication technology. In this review article, we describe the principle of continuous-variable quantum key distribution, focusing in particular on protocols based on coherent states. We discuss the security of these protocols and report on the state-of-the-art in experimental implementations, including the issue of side-channel attacks. We conclude with promising perspectives in this research field.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3479dad235c139e5992dfef4c71ef56ed4ab8a99

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Practical challenges in quantum key distribution (2016, unknown): “38,42 We remark that advances towards high-performance QKD systems in terms of key rate and distance are coupled with the security guarantees offered by these systems.”
Secure quantum key distribution with realistic devices (2020, background): “In Section VII, we review the developments of CV-QKD schemes and their practical security aspects.”
Continuous‐Variable Quantum Key Distribution with Gaussian Modulation—The Theory of Practical Implementations (2017, background): “A good overview of the state-of-the-art in GM CV-QKD and the security of various protocols is given in [35], however that review does not provide any detailed calculations.”
Advances in quantum cryptography (2019, unknown): “By contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) offers the ultimate solution: restoring security and confidentiality by resorting to unbreakable principles of nature, such as the uncertainty principle or the monogamy of entanglement [27–30].”
Progress in satellite quantum key distribution (2017, methodology): “In CV-QKD, information is encoded in the quadratures of randomly selected coherent states, which are then measured using either homodyne or heterodyne detection [23, 24].”