Practical decoy state for quantum key distribution (15 pages)

By Xiongfeng Ma, Hoi-Kwong Lo, Yi Zhao, Bing Qi. 2005

932 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Decoy states have recently been proposed as a useful method for substantially improving the performance of quantum key distribution (QKD). Here, we present a general theory of the decoy state protocol based on only two decoy states and one signal state. We perform optimization on the choice of intensities of the two decoy states and the signal state. Our result shows that a decoy state protocol with only two types of decoy states---the vacuum and a weak decoy state---asymptotically approaches the theoretical limit of the most general type of decoy state protocol (with an infinite number of decoy states). We also present a one-decoy-state protocol. Moreover, we provide estimations on the effects of statistical fluctuations and suggest that, even for long-distance (larger than 100 km) QKD, our two-decoy-state protocol can be implemented with only a few hours of experimental data. In conclusion, decoy state quantum key distribution is highly practical.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5fe7ca7b44999b5e13e8633e616b8f2887565508

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Citations in the corpus

Orbital Angular Momentum States Enabling Fiber-based High-dimensional Quantum Communication (2018, background): “[56] X.”
Chip-based quantum key distribution (2015, methodology): “The secret key rate for BB84 was calculated using the raw and sifted key rates, and the measured QBER, using the security proof of Ma et al.[21].”
Quantum eavesdropping without interception: an attack exploiting the dead time of single-photon detectors (2011, background): “94, 230504 [21] Ma X, Qi B, Zhao Y and Lo H-K 2005 Practical decoy state for quantum key distribution.”
Decoy state quantum key distribution. (2004, background): “1 1 0 2 2 2 0 L L U e Q Q Q e Q e Y e μ υ μ υ μ μ υ μ υ μυ υ μ μ −     − ≥ = − −       −     are given by [12]:”
Quantum key distribution with entangled photon sources (2007, background): “In the coherent PDC QKD and the triggering PDC QKD, on the other hand, Alice and Bob need to know the value of some experimental parameters ahead, such as the expected photon number μ (= 2λ), and also need to estimate the gain and error rate of the single photon states Q1 and e1, which make the stat”
Time-shift attack in practical quantum cryptosystems (2005, background): “ the nonzero multi-photon emission probability of Alice’s laser source 1 and the lossy nature of a quantum channel. Security proofs for practical QKD systems exist [11, 12]. Recently, decoy state QKD [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20] has also been proposed to substantially increase the distance and k”
Experimental quantum key distribution with decoy states. (2005, methodology): “s well as the gain of the vacuum state Y0 could also be acquired directly from experiments. Considering statistical ﬂuctuations, the lower bounds of Y11 and Q1, and the upper bound of e1 are given by [15] Y1 ≥ Y L,ν,0 1 = µ µν −ν2 (QL ν e ν −Q µe µ ν 2 µ2 − µ2−ν2 µ2 Y0). Q1 ≥ Q L,ν,0 1 = µ2e−µ µν −ν”