Effect of imperfect Faraday mirrors on security of a Faraday-Michelson quantum cryptography system
Abstract
The one-way Faraday-Michelson system is a very useful practical quantum cryptography system where Faraday mirrors(FMs) play an important role. In this paper we analyze the security of this system against imperfect FMs. We consider the security loophole caused by the imperfect FMs in Alice's and Bob's security zones. Then we implement a passive Faraday mirror attack in this system. By changing the values of the imperfection parameters of Alice's FMs, we calculate the quantum bit error rate between Alice and Bob induced by Eve and the probability that Eve obtains outcomes successfully. It is shown that the imperfection of one of Alice's two FMs makes the system sensitive to the attack. At last we give a modified key rate as a function of the Faraday mirror imperfections. The security analysis indicates that both Alice's and Bob's imperfect FMs can compromise the secure key.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1310.7668,
title = {Effect of imperfect Faraday mirrors on security of a Faraday-Michelson quantum cryptography system},
author = {Wang Weilong and Gao Ming and Ma Zhi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.7668},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
13 pages, 4 figures