Continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) allows for quantum secure communication with the benefit of being close to existing classical coherent communication. In recent years, CV QKD protocols using a discrete number of displaced coherent states have been studied intensively, as the modulation can be directly implemented with real devices with a finite digital resolution. However, the experimental demonstrations until now only calculated key rates in the asymptotic regime. To be used in cryptographic applications, a QKD system has to generate keys with composable security in the finite-size regime. In this paper, we present a CV QKD system using discrete modulation that is especially designed for urban atmospheric channels. For this, we use polarization encoding to cope with the turbulent but non-birefringent atmosphere. This will allow to expand CV QKD networks beyond the existing fiber backbone. In a first laboratory demonstration, we implemented a novel type of security proof allowing to calculate composable finite-size key rates against i.i.d. collective attacks without any Gaussian assumptions. We applied the full QKD protocol including a QRNG, error correction and privacy amplification to extract secret keys. In particular, we studied the impact of frame errors on the actual key generation.
@article{arxiv.2410.12915,
title = {Composable free-space continuous-variable quantum key distribution using discrete modulation},
author = {Kevin Jaksch and Thomas Dirmeier and Yannick Weiser and Stefan Richter and Ömer Bayraktar and Bastian Hacker and Conrad Rösler and Imran Khan and Stefan Petscharning and Thomas Grafenauer and Michael Hentschel and Bernhard Ömer and Christoph Pacher and Florian Kanitschar and Twesh Upadhyaya and Jie Lin and Norbert Lütkenhaus and Gerd Leuchs and Christoph Marquardt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.12915},
year = {2024}
}