Search

The distribution of the deterministic key has great significance in quantum communication. By exploiting quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping, two quantum deterministic key distribution (QDKD) protocols are presented to hand over the previously deterministic key to the intended receiver, which is different from the existed quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols only yielding a random key. Meanwhile, the proposed QDKD protocol based on teleportation can also distribute the random key. Furthermore, the security of QDKD protocols is analyzed in detail from information theory. It shows that our proposed QDKD protocols can securely and effectively hand over the pre-deterministic key to the specific target. The QDKD protocols are the necessary supplement to the QKD protocols generating random key and of great significance in the field of key management.

This work presents a quantum key agreement (QKA) based on the BB84 protocol. The newly proposed QKA protocol enables two involved parties to jointly establish a shared secret key in such a way that the shared secret key cannot be fully determined by one party alone. In contrast to the traditional key agreement protocols that must be based on some mathematical difficulties, the security of the newly proposed protocol is based on the quantum phenomena, which allows unconditional security as well as detection of eavesdroppers. With the technique of delayed measurement, the proposed protocol has 50% qubit efficiency. Therefore, it is very efficient and feasible for practical applications.

A new decoy state method has been presented to tighten the lower bound of the key generation rate for BB84 using one decoy state and one signal state. It can give us different lower and upper bounds of the fraction of single-photon counts and single-photon QBER, respectively, for one decoy state protocol. We have also analyzed the feasibility of performing quantum key distribution (QKD), with different exiting protocols, in earth-satellite and intersatellite links. Our simulation shows the choice of intensity of signal state and the effect of choosing the number of decoy states on key generation rate. The final key rate over transmission distance has been simulated, which shows that security proofs give a zero key generation rate at long distances (larger than 16,000 km). It has been shown that the practical QKD can be established with low earth orbit and medium earth orbit satellites.

We propose a secure bidirectional quantum communication protocol, which is based on a shared private quantum entangled channel, the highlight of our protocol is that the drawback “information leakage” is eliminated. Our protocol is similar but more efficient than a bidirectional quantum communication based on QKD & OTP (One-time pad).

We present a new concept for compensation of single mode fiber (SMF) birefringence effects in a Sagnac quantum key distribution (QKD) setup, based on a polarization control system and a polarizatio ...

We report five-user quantum key distribution (QKD) over switched fiber networks in both star and tree configurations, using the BB84-protocol [1] with phase encoding. Both setups implement polarization insensitive phase modulators, necessary for birefringent single mode fiber (SMF) networks. In both configurations we have achieved transmission distances between 25 km and 50 km with quantum bit error rates between 1.24% and 5.56% for the mean photon number μ=0.1. The measurements have showed feasibility of multiuser QKD over switched fiber networks, using standard fiber telecom components.

We present an asymptotic security proof of deterministic quantum key distribution (DQKD) with a two-way quantum channel. The security proof of DQKD with a two-way quantum channel is different from that of BB84, because Eve can attack the travel qubits twice, both in line Bob to Alice and in line Alice to Bob. With the no-signaling principle and the property of mutual information, we obtain an upper bound of the final key generation of entanglement-based DQKD and hence single-photon four-state DQKD. Our results can be applied to the protocol of QKD with two-step quantum channels.

By combining the idea of quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) and BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD), we propose a secure quantum dialogue protocol via single photons. Comparing with the previous bidirectional quantum secure communication scheme [24] in which the EPR pairs are used, our protocol is not only feasible in practice but also can overcome the drawback “information leakage” or “classical correlation”. Our scheme possesses the characters of security and high efficiency.

A frequency-coded quantum key distribution scheme, what we propose here, is that using encoded qubit in different frequency of a photon in four kinds of states. These states satisfy requirements of BB84 protocol and could be produced with the recent advances in technology. Comparing with the scheme proposed in [Bloch et al., Opt. Lett. 32 (2007) 301], our scheme has no intrinsic deficiency that the measurement of one kind of the states will get wrong result with a little probability, and is a perfect BB84 protocol. The characters and feasibility of the scheme are discussed in detail.

This study points out that a malicious gateway in Hong et al.'s multi-user quantum key distribution protocol [Optics Communication 283 (2010) 2644] may be able to reveal the secret key of the protocol without being detected. An improvement is suggested to avoid the weakness.