† Corresponding author. E-mail:
Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61572529, 61871407, and 61801522) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2013M542119 and 2014T70772).
Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) protocols with entanglement in the middle (EM) enable long maximal transmission distances for quantum communications. For the security analysis of the protocols, it is usually assumed that Eve performs collective Gaussian attacks and there is a lack of finite-size analysis of the protocols. However, in this paper we consider the finite-size regime of the EM-based CVQKD protocols by exposing the protocol to collective attacks and coherent attacks. We differentiate between the collective attacks and the coherent attacks while comparing asymptotic key rate and the key rate in the finite-size scenarios. Moreover, both symmetric and asymmetric configurations are collated in a contrastive analysis. As expected, the derived results in the finite-size scenarios are less useful than those acquired in the asymptotic regime. Nevertheless, we find that CVQKD with entanglement in the middle is capable of providing fully secure secret keys taking the finite-size effects into account with transmission distances of more than 30 km.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) permits two authenticated partners Alice and Bob to share secret keys over an insecure quantum channel.[1,2] These keys can be applied to authenticate and encrypt. In theory, QKD provides unconditional security guaranteed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which can ensure secure communication despite the existence of an eavesdropper called Eve. Two possible ways have been put forward to implement QKD. One is discrete-variable (DV) QKD which uses a single photon to encode the transmissive information,[3–5] and there have been increased experimental efforts in this area recently.[6–12] The other is continuous-variable (CV) QKD,[13–20] which encodes information in phase space (
In CVQKD systems, secret information is encoded in the quadratures at Alice’s side, and the receiver Bob can decode the information by performing homodyne detection or heterodyne detection with high efficiency.[23–25] Up to now, Gaussian-modulated coherent state CVQKD systems have been demonstrated to be secure against both collective and coherent attacks, and have also been proved to defend well against coherent attacks in a finite-size scenario by exploiting postselection technology[26] and an entropic uncertainty relationship.[27] The unconditional security of CVQKD based on a perfect optical source has also been researched in Refs. [28]– [34]. From the perspective of practical realizations, the CVQKD scheme has the potential to integrate with a telecommunication network since standard optical telecommunication technologies are applicable for CVQKD. However, a chief limitation of CVQKD protocols is the secure transmission distance. There are several approaches to settling the matter. The first is to find or design a suitable error correcting code, like LDPC codes, to enhance the reconciliation efficiency,[35–37] which can lead to a significant improvement in the transmission distance under low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios. The second solution is to employ a better performance protocol such as the entanglement in the middle (EM)-based CVQKD protocol.[38]
In contrast to the point-to-point CVQKD, in the EM-based CVQKD, the entangled resource that is placed between Alice and Bob is created by an untrusted third party Charlie, and even probably by Eve. For all these, secure keys can still be generated between Alice and Bob to encrypt information. Furthermore, this protocol has been proved to improve the transmission distance significantly. Consequently, the better performance of the protocol has attracted increasing attention.[39] However, a problem that cannot be neglected is that Eve controls the entangled source, which means that Eve can perform any type of attack, including collective and coherent attacks, in this protocol. So it is necessary to analyze the security under both types of attack. Similarly to the device-independent (DI) CVQKD protocols which provide a way for Alice and Bob to share keys without understanding the inner workings of the device or even the dimension of the space in which the quantum state is located,[40,41] this entangled protocol has been proposed to create a secret relationship between two legal parties Alice and Bob.
When it comes to security analysis of EM-based CVQKD protocols, there is a lack of security in the finite-size case. As a matter of fact, when we make an assumption that only a limited number of signals are swapped between Alice and Bob, it is obviously that the key rate will go down. Even so, finite-size analysis is a necessary step towards more general safety certification in the composable framework.[27,42,43] While theoretical research on the effects of finite-size has been completed in previous works,[44–47] there are no results proposed yet which are relevant to finite-size in the EM-based CVQKD protocol.
In order to optimize the security analysis of the protocols, in this paper we consider the security of entangling sources in the middle in a finite-size scenario. Since Eve controls the entangled source, Eve could prepare any arbitrary type of attack that she wants. Therefore, both collective and coherent attacks are taken into account in the security analysis of the protocol. For a single channel, a Gaussian collective attack maximizes the eavesdropper’s extractable information. Because of the particularity of the protocols of entanglement in the middle, the effects of coherent attacks are more powerful when two channels are available. To make the security analysis more practical and realistic, the finite-size effects are taken into consideration during the parameter estimation procedures. Both symmetric and asymmetric configurations are collated in a contrastive analysis. Differently from DI CVQKD protocols, EM-based CVQKD must have perfect control of their measurement devices and must focus on building secret relationships by employing a source of entanglements transmitted from the middle to the remote legitimate ends, whereas DI QKD is typical of a relaxation of security hypotheses made in general QKD,[48] aiming to design encryption protocols to prevent increasingly powerful eavesdroppers. The EM-based CVQKD has its own merits, and is easier to implement in practice compared to DI QKD.
This paper is organized as follows. A detailed description of the entanglement in the middle CVQKD protocol against two-mode Gaussian attacks is given in Section
As shown in Fig.
Hereafter, we assume that Eve performs a coherent Gaussian attack, since this attack is more powerful than a collective Gaussian attack. The two-mode Gaussian attack is realized by two beam splitters. Employing the two beam splitters, the incoming modes
At the destination, Alice and Bob receive the information transmitted over the noisy channel, and then need to measure the information they received via heterodyne detection or homodyne detection. For the measurement process, a local oscillator is required as a reference pulse. In addition, depending on the measurement, we also need to adjust the pulse from the local oscillator.
To derive the secret key rate in the finite-size analysis, we make an assumption that Eve performs a coherent Gaussian attack. We expound the procedures for computing the total covariance matrices and asymptotic secret key rate. However, what we achieved in the asymptotic regime is an ideal case. To fill the gap between theory and practice, we will obtain the secret key rate with finite-size effects in the next section.
The correlation of the two-mode Gaussian state ρE1E2 is described by covariance matrix (CM) given by
Based on the bona-fide conditions, by changing the values of g and g′, we have different types of attack. As an example, for g = g′ = 0, the two-mode Gaussian state ρE1E2 is a tensor product, leading to the standard Gaussian collective attacks which are realized by two independent entangling cloners. For g ≠ 0 and g ′ ≠ 0, Eve can perform a coherent attack, in which two entangling cloners are correlative (more details are shown in Appendix A).
The secret key rate of CVQKD protocols involves three factors in the asymptotic regime: the modulation variance V, the channel’s transmissivity T, and the variance of excess noise ω. The modulation variance V is supposed to be a given parameter. Direct reconciliation is equivalent to reverse reconciliation in EM-based CVQKD protocols, so we will just consider the secret key rate for the reverse reconciliation
The mutual information of Alice and Bob is defined when the EPR state is squeezed and homodyne measurement is performed
In QKD experiments, the transmission of a secret key is not unending. This means that Alice and Bob exchange finite signals. Moreover, only a portion of the transmitted signals are applied to extract the key and the rest are used for channel parameter estimation. In this case, we extend the parameter estimation[52] from the traditional point-to-point CVQKD protocols to the EM-based CVQKD protocols. To obtain the minimum key rate, we choose the minimum of the transmissivity and the maximum of excess noise.
After the EPR states have been transmitted over the noisy channel, Alice and Bob’s output variables x1 and x2 can be depicted by the following formulas:
In the CVQKD protocols, there is no doubt that the influence of finite-size on the key rate is mainly reflected in parameter estimation. In the covariance matrix, except for the modulation variance of the entangled source, there are two unknown parameters: transmissivity and excess noise. The raw key is used for both parameter estimation and key generation, and we use m to denote the number of parameter estimation signals. Let us estimate T1 and ω1 first; T2 and ω2 can be obtained by the same method. Ai and Ci (i = 1,2,…,m) are the implementation of x1 and
Based on the estimated channel transmissivity and the corresponding excess noise, the secret key rate considering the finite-size effects is derived as
According to the previous analysis, we can obtain a relation between the secret key rate and the related parameters. In Fig.
Figure
Figure
Figure
We have studied the EM-based CVQKD protocols, focusing on their security against collective attack and coherent attack in finite-size scenarios. This happens when the two parties exchange a limited number of signals in the quantum communication stage. In our analysis, we assume that the reconciliation efficiency is less than 1, meaning that the error correction and privacy amplification are imperfect. In the EM-based CVQKD protocols, the entangled source is created by an untrusted third party which might be controlled by Eve, so that Eve can use various attack strategies. During the attack implementation, Eve prepares two entangled clones and then injects them into two quantum channels, respectively. By changing the correlation between the two entangled clones, Eve can employ different methods of attack to steal information. Our simulation results show that when Eve performs a Gaussian coherent attack, it can extract more information than a Gaussian collective attack in the protocols of entanglement in the middle. To take the worst case scenario into consideration, we assume that Eve performs coherent attacks, leading to a decline in realizable maximum transmission distance and secret key rate. The key rate in a finite-size scenario is inferior to that in the asymptotic regime. And the transmission distance can be improved in asymmetric configuration. Taking finite-size effects into account, when the size reaches 105, the secret key rate can achieve 10−2 with transmission distances of more than 30 km under coherent attacks. Finally, we need to mention that what we have analyzed in this paper is not the final result of finite-size analysis on the CV-QKD protocols with entanglement in the middle. Further research into finite-size effects is needed in the composable security framework.[53]
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