English

Measurement-Device-Independenization of Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

Quantum Physics 2023-07-04 v9

Abstract

Quantum key distribution(QKD) allows the legitimate partner to establish a secret key whose security only depends on physical laws. In recent years, research on QKD by employing insecure measurement devices, namely measurement-device-independent QKD (MDI-QKD) is increased. MDI-QKD removes all attacks on measurement devices and thus an untrusted third party can be employed for measuring. However, a weakness of previous MDI-QKD protocols is the need for joint measurements such as Bell measurements whose efficiency is low in practice. On the other hand, can all QKD protocols become measurement-device-independent remains a problem. In this paper, we present a scheme making prepare-measure QKD protocols become MDI-QKD protocols, called measurementdeviceindependenization'measurement-device-independenization', which does not need to employ joint measurements and could be efficiently implemented by weak coherence sources. The protocol might look like the detector-device-independent(DDI) protocols but it is also secure under the Trojan horse attack. To illustrate this, we investigate the photon-number-adding(PNA) attack and present a scheme, called photonnumberpurification'photon-number-purification', which can also be employed to close loopholes for previous protocols such as DDI and plug-and-play ones.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.01979,
  title  = {Measurement-Device-Independenization of Quantum Key Distribution Protocols},
  author = {Hao Shu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.01979},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

13 pages, 3 tables and 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:37:57.900Z