Continuous-variable quantum secure direct communication with one-time pad

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) enables the direct transmission of secret messages over a quantum channel without prior key sharing. QSDC implemented in the continuous-variable (CV) regime allows high-capacity information transmission using simple optical communication technologies. In this work, we propose a novel CV-QSDC protocol with a quantum one-time pad, which achieves secure message transmission based on coherent states and unitary operations, and the receiver can directly obtain the secret messages after measuring the coherent states. The security of this protocol is jointly guaranteed by one-time pad encryption and a CV quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol. Performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme can achieve a quantum bit error rate (QBER) lower than 1% by adjusting the modulation variance and unitary operation parameters. With the optimal modulation variance, the secure transmission distance of the proposed protocol can exceed 150 km.