It is known that quantum scissors, as non-deterministic amplifiers, can enhance the performance of Gaussian-modulated continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) in noisy and long-distance regimes of operation. Here, we extend this result to a non-Gaussian CV-QKD protocol with discrete modulation. We show that, by using a proper setting, the use of quantum scissors in the receiver of such discrete-modulation CV-QKD protocols would allow us to achieve positive secret key rates at high loss and high excess noise regimes of operation, which would have been otherwise impossible. This also keeps the prospect of running discrete-modulation CV-QKD over CV quantum repeaters alive.
@article{arxiv.1907.13405,
title = {Discrete-modulation continuous-variable quantum key distribution enhanced by quantum scissors},
author = {Masoud Ghalaii and Carlo Ottaviani and Rupesh Kumar and Stefano Pirandola and Mohsen Razavi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.13405},
year = {2020}
}