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Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with uncharacterized coherent sources

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Abstract

Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) is proposed to close all possible side channel detector attacks. The security of the original proposal relies on the assumption that the legitimate users can characterize their sources exactly, which might not be satisfied in practice. Later, some MDI-QKD protocols with uncharacterized qubit sources are proposed to remove the assumption that legitimate users must characterize their encoding states. Here we propose a MDI-QKD with uncharacterized coherent sources. The assumption is that legitimate users only ensure that sources, for encoding, are coherent sources (can be expressed as a mixture of Fock states), while the accuracy of the encoding operations and the intensity of the coherent sources cannot be characterized exactly by them. Based on this assumption, we derived the formulas of the security bounds for it under collective attacks, and simulation results of the security bounds are also presented by employing parameters of current QKD technology. It shows that the lower bound of performance can cover long distances.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11464015, the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province under Grant No. 14jj6035 and the Science Research Foundation of Education Department of Hunan Province under Grant Nos. (14B147,18C0585).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Software Engineering of Ministry of Education, and School of Software, JiShou University, Zhangjiajie, 427000, China

    Guo-Dong Kang, Qing-Ping Zhou & Mao-Fa Fang

  2. School of Physics and Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jishou University, Jishou, 416000, China

    Guo-Dong Kang & Qing-Ping Zhou

  3. Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Structures and Quantum Control of Ministry of Education, and Department of Physics, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China

    Mao-Fa Fang

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  1. Guo-Dong Kang
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Kang, GD., Zhou, QP. & Fang, MF. Measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with uncharacterized coherent sources. Quantum Inf Process 19, 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-019-2494-0

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