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Published on: May 30, 2014
Device-Independent Quantum Key Activation
Bora Ulu1, Nicolas Brunner1, Mirjam Weilenmann1,2
1University of Geneva, Department of Applied Physics, Geneva, Switzerland.
None:
Device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) allows two distant parties to establish a secret key, based only on the observed Bell nonlocal distribution. It remains unclear, however, what the minimal resources for enabling DIQKD are and how to maximize the key rate from a given distribution. In the present Letter, we consider a scenario where several copies of a given quantum distribution are jointly processed via a local and classical wiring operation. We find that, under few assumptions, it is possible to activate device-independent key, that is, starting from a distribution that is useless in a DIQKD protocol, we obtain a positive asymptotic key rate by wiring several copies together. We coin this effect device-independent key activation. Our analysis focuses on the standard DIQKD protocol with one-way postprocessing, and we resort to semidefinite programming techniques for computing lower bounds on the key rate.
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