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Sending-or-Not-Sending Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution with Light Source Monitoring.

Yucheng Qiao¹, Ziyang Chen¹, Yichen Zhang²

¹State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication, Systems and Networks, Department of Electronics, and Center for Quantum Information Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.

Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)

|December 8, 2020

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This summary is machine-generated.

This study validates the security of the sending-or-not-sending (SNS) protocol in twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) even with an unknown photon number distribution (PND) from the light source. Performance remains stable with added light source monitoring.

Area of Science:

Quantum Information Science
Quantum Cryptography
Optical Communication Systems

Background:

Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) offers secure communication over long distances (over 500 km).
Existing TF-QKD protocols, like the sending-or-not-sending (SNS) protocol, often assume ideal light sources (coherent states).
This assumption is not met in practice, posing security risks in real-world quantum key distribution (QKD) systems.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the security of the SNS protocol when the photon number distribution (PND) of the light source is unknown.
To demonstrate the validity of the security analysis for the SNS protocol under non-ideal source conditions.
To assess the impact of light source monitoring on the performance of the SNS protocol.

Main Methods:

Keywords:

light source monitoring quantum key distribution sending-or-not-sending twin-fields

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Theoretical analysis of the SNS protocol under an unknown photon number distribution (PND).
Security analysis incorporating practical limitations of real-world light sources in QKD.
Simulation or experimental validation of the SNS protocol's performance with and without source monitoring.

Main Results:

The security analysis of the SNS protocol remains valid even when the photon number distribution (PND) of the light source is unknown.
The performance of the SNS protocol is shown to be largely unaffected by the unknown PND when employing light source monitoring.
Practical security concerns related to non-ideal light sources in TF-QKD are addressed.

Conclusions:

The SNS protocol offers robust security for TF-QKD, even with practical light sources exhibiting unknown photon number distributions (PNDs).
Implementing light source monitoring is an effective strategy to maintain the performance and security of the SNS protocol.
This research contributes to the practical implementation of secure long-distance quantum key distribution systems.