paper

Security proof for QKD systems with threshold detectors

arXiv:0803.4226 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.78.032302

Abstract

In this paper, we rigorously prove the intuition that in security proofs for BB84 one may regard an incoming signal to Bob as a qubit state. From this result, it follows that all security proofs for BB84 based on a virtual qubit entanglement distillation protocol, which was originally proposed by Lo and Chau [H.-K. Lo and H. F. Chau, Science 283, 2050 (1999)], and Shor and Preskill [P. W. Shor and J. Preskill, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 441 (2000)], are all valid even if Bob's actual apparatus cannot distill a qubit state explicitly. As a consequence, especially, the well-known result that a higher bit error rate of 20% can be tolerated for BB84 protocol by using two-way classical communications is still valid even when Bob uses threshold detectors. Using the same technique, we also prove the security of the Bennett-Brassard-Mermin 1992 (BBM92) protocol where Alice and Bob both use threshold detectors.

6 pages, 4 figures; references changed; revised argument for the security proof; typos corrected

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