Unconstrained Capacities of Quantum Key Distribution and Entanglement Distillation for Pure-Loss Bosonic Broadcast...

We consider quantum key distribution (QKD) and entanglement distribution using a single-sender multiple-receiver pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel. We determine the unconstrained capacity region for the distillation of bipartite entanglement and secret key between the sender and each receiver, whenever they are allowed arbitrary public classical communication. A practical implication of our result is that the capacity region demonstrated drastically improves upon rates achievable using a naive time-sharing strategy, which has been employed in previously demonstrated network QKD systems. We show a simple example of a broadcast QKD protocol overcoming the limit of the point-to-point strategy. Our result is thus an important step toward opening a new framework of network channel-based quantum communication technology.