Distributed-phase-reference quantum key distribution stands out for its easy implementation with present day technology. Since many years, a full security proof of these schemes in a realistic setting has been elusive. For the first time, we solve this long standing problem and present a generic method to prove the security of such protocols against general attacks. To illustrate our result we provide lower bounds on the key generation rate of a variant of the coherent-one-way quantum key distribution protocol. In contrast to standard predictions, it appears to scale quadratically with the system transmittance.
@article{arxiv.1207.5544,
title = {Security of distributed-phase-reference quantum key distribution},
author = {Tobias Moroder and Marcos Curty and Charles Ci Wen Lim and Le Phuc Thinh and Hugo Zbinden and Nicolas Gisin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.5544},
year = {2013}
}