No Arabic abstract
Quantum key distribution (QKD) can help two distant peers to share secret key bits, whose security is guaranteed by the law of physics. In practice, the secret key rate of a QKD protocol is always lowered with the increasing of channel distance, which severely limits the applications of QKD. Recently, twin-field (TF) QKD has been proposed and intensively studied, since it can beat the rate-distance limit and greatly increase the achievable distance of QKD. Remarkalebly, K. Maeda et. al. proposed a simple finite-key analysis for TF-QKD based on operator dominance condition. Although they showed that their method is sufficient to beat the rate-distance limit, their operator dominance condition is not general, i.e. it can be only applied in three decoy states scenarios, which implies that its key rate cannot be increased by introducing more decoy states, and also cannot reach the asymptotic bound even in case of preparing infinite decoy states and optical pulses. Here, to bridge this gap, we propose an improved finite-key analysis of TF-QKD through devising new operator dominance condition. We show that by adding the number of decoy states, the secret key rate can be furtherly improved and approach the asymptotic bound. Our theory can be directly used in TF-QKD experiment to obtain higher secret key rate. Our results can be directly used in experiments to obtain higher key rates.
Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD), which is immune to all possible detector side channel attacks, enables two remote legitimate users to perform secure communications without quantum repeaters. With the help of a central node, TF-QKD is expected to overcome the linear key-rate constraint using current technologies. However, the security of the former TF-QKD protocols relies on the hypothesis of infinite-key and stable sources. In this paper, we present the finite-key analysis of a practical decoy-state twin-field quantum key distribution with variant statistical fluctuation models. We examine the composable security of the protocol with intensity fluctuations of unstable sources employing Azumas inequality. Our simulation results indicate that the secret key rate is able to surpass the linear key-rate bound with limited signal pulses and intensity fluctuations. In addition, the effect of intensity fluctuations is extremely significant for small size of total signals.
Twin-Field (TF) quantum key distribution (QKD) is a major candidate to be the new benchmark for far-distance QKD implementations, since its secret key rate can overcome the repeaterless bound by means of a simple interferometric measurement. Many variants of the original protocol have been recently proven to be secure. Here, we focus on the TF-QKD type protocol proposed by Curty et al [preprint arXiv:1807.07667], which can provide a high secret key rate and whose practical feasibility has been demonstrated in various recent experiments. The security of this protocol relies on the estimation of certain detection probabilities (yields) through the decoy-state technique. Analytical bounds on the relevant yields have been recently derived assuming that both parties use the same set of decoy intensities, thus providing sub-optimal key rates in asymmetric-loss scenarios. Here we derive new analytical bounds when the parties use either three or four independent decoy intensity settings each. With the new bounds we optimize the protocols performance in asymmetric-loss scenarios and show that the protocol is robust against uncorrelated intensity fluctuations affecting the parties lasers.
Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) and its variant protocols are highly attractive due to the advantage of overcoming the rate-loss limit for secret key rates of point-to-point QKD protocols. For variations of TF-QKD, the key point to ensure security is switching randomly between a code mode and a test mode. Among all TF-QKD protocols, their code modes are very different, e.g. modulating continuous phases, modulating only two opposite phases, and sending or not sending signal pulses. Here we show that, by discretizing the number of global phases in the code mode, we can give a unified view on the first two types of TF-QKD protocols, and demonstrate that increasing the number of discrete phases extends the achievable distance, and as a trade-off, lowers the secret key rate at short distances due to the phase post-selection.
The lists of bits processed in quantum key distribution are necessarily of finite length. The need for finite-key unconditional security bounds has been recognized long ago, but the theoretical tools have become available only very recently. We provide finite-key unconditional security bounds for two practical implementations of the Bennett-Brassard 1984 coding: prepare-and-measure implementations without decoy states, and entanglement-based implementations. A finite-key bound for prepare-and-measure implementations with decoy states is also derived under a simplified treatment of the statistical fluctuations. The presentation is tailored to allow direct application of the bounds in experiments. Finally, the bounds are also evaluated on a priori reasonable expected values of the observed parameters.
Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution(TF-QKD) protocol and its variants, such as Phase-Matching QKD(PM-QKD), sending or not QKD(SNS-QKD) and No Phase Post-Selection TF-QKD(NPP-TFQKD), are very promising for long-distance applications. However, there are still some gaps between theory and practice in these protocols. Concretely, a finite-key size analysis is still missing, and the intensity fluctuations are not taken into account. To address the finite-key size effect, we first give the key rate of NPP-TFQKD against collective attack in finite-key size region and then prove it can be against coherent attack. To deal with the intensity fluctuations, we present an analytical formula of 4-intensity decoy state NPP-TFQKD and a practical intensity fluctuation model. Finally, through detailed simulations, we show NPP-TFQKD can still keep its superiority of high key rate and long achievable distance.