On the Security of Semi Device Independent QKD protocols

While fully device-independent security in (BB84-like) prepare and measure Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is impossible, it can be guaranteed against individual attacks in a semi device-independent (SDI) scenario, wherein no assumptions are made on the characteristics of the hardware used are made except for an upper bound on the the dimension of the communicated system. Studying security under such minimal assumptions is especially relevant in the context of the recent {it quantum hacking} attacks wherein the eavesdroppers can not only construct the devices used by the communicating parties but are also able to remotely alter their behavior. In this work we study the security of a SDIQKD protocol based on the prepare and measure quantum implementation of a well-known cryptographic primitive, the Random Access Code (RAC). We consider imperfect detectors and establish the critical values of the security parameters (the observed success probability of the RAC and the detection efficiency) required for guaranteeing security against eavesdroppers with and without quantum memory. Furthermore we suggest a minimal characterization of the preparation device in order to lower the requirements for establishing a secure key.

Sequential Quantum Secret Sharing in a Noisy Environment aided with Weak Measurements

In this work we give a $(n,n)$-threshold protocol for sequential secret sharing of quantum information for the first time. By sequential secret sharing we refer to a situation where the dealer is not having all the secrets at the same time, at the beginning of the protocol; however if the dealer wishes to share secrets at subsequent phases she/he can realize it with the help of our protocol. First of all we present our protocol for three parties and later we generalize it for the situation where we have $(n>3)$ parties. Further in a much more realistic situation, we consider the sharing of qubits through two kinds of noisy channels, namely the phase damping channel (PDC) and the amplitude damping channel (ADC). When we carry out the sequential secret sharing in the presence of noise we observe that the fidelity of secret sharing at the $k^{th}$ iteration is independent of the effect of noise at the $(k-1)^{th}$ iteration. In case of ADC we have seen that the average fidelity of secret sharing drops down to $frac{1}{2}$ which is equivalent to a random guess of the quantum secret. Interestingly, we find that by applying weak measurements one can enhance the average fidelity. This increase of the average fidelity can be achieved with certain trade off with the success probability of the weak measurements.