We study the problem of secret key distillation from bipartite states in the scenario where Alice and Bob can only perform measurements at the single-copy level and classically process the obtained outcomes. Even with these limitations, secret bits can be asymptotically distilled by the honest parties from any two-qubit entangled state, under any individual attack. Our results point out a complete equivalence between two-qubit entanglement and secure key distribution: a key can be established through a one-qubit channel if and only if it allows to distribute entanglement. These results can be generalized to higher dimension for all those states that are one-copy distillable.
We study Erbium-doped LiNbO3 waveguides for storage and readout of light pulses based on stimulated photon-echoes. Our results are promising in view of storage of single-photon quantum states as required for a quantum repeater.
The differential-phase-shift (DPS) and the coherent-one-way (COW) are among the most practical protocols for quantum cryptography, and are therefore the object of fast-paced experimental developments. The assessment of their security is also a challenge for theorists: the existing tools, that allow to prove security against the most general attacks, do not apply to these two protocols in any straightforward way. We present new upper bounds for their security in the limit of large distances (d≳50 km with typical values in optical fibers) by considering a large class of collective attacks, namely those in which the adversary attaches ancillary quantum systems to each pulse or to each pair of pulses. We introduce also two modified versions of the COW protocol, which may prove more robust than the original one.
Symmetric informationally complete measurements (SICs) are elegant, celebrated, and broadly useful discrete structures in Hilbert space. We introduce a more sophisticated discrete structure compounded by several SICs. A SIC compound is defined to be a collection of d3 vectors in d-dimensional Hilbert space that can be partitioned in two different ways: into d SICs and into d2 orthonormal bases. While a priori their existence may appear unlikely when d>2, we surprisingly find an explicit construction for d=4. Remarkably this SIC compound admits a close relation to mutually unbiased bases, as is revealed through quantum state discrimination. Going beyond fundamental considerations, we leverage these exotic properties to construct a protocol for quantum key distribution and analyze its security under general eavesdropping attacks. We show that SIC compounds enable secure key generation in the presence of errors that are large enough to prevent the success of the generalization of the six-state protocol.Received 8 July 2020Accepted 14 August 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.043122Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum communicationQuantum cryptographyQuantum foundationsQuantum measurementsGeneral PhysicsQuantum Information
No abstract is provided for this article.
We review the status of Bell's inequalities in quantum information, stressing mainly the links with quantum key distribution and distillation of entanglement. We also prove that for all the eavesdropping attacks using one qubit, and for a family of attacks of two qubits, acting on half of a maximally entangled state of two qubits, the violation of a Bell inequality implies the possibility of an efficient secret-key extraction.
No abstract is provided for this article.
We develop a means of simulating the evolution and measurement of a multipartite quantum state under discrete or continuous evolution using another quantum system with states and operators lying in a real Hilbert space. This extends previous results which were unable to simulate local evolution and measurements with local operators and was limited to discrete evolution. We also detail applications to Bell inequalities and self-testing of the quantum apparatus.
Polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) has only recently become of interest because its effects are relevant only in the gigabits-per-second regime. However, our experience, summarized in Table 1, has taught us that polarization-mode delays in installed cables are often an order of magnitude larger than expected: 10 ps for approximately 100 km instead of the 1 ps extrapolated from measurements on uncabled fibers. This, together with the fact that PMD varies strongly from one fiber to another even within the same tube, suggests strongly that PMD measurements could also provide information about the fiber and cable quality.
