Passive-scheme analysis for solving untrusted source problem in quantum key distribution

Abstract

As a practical method, the passive scheme is useful to monitor the photon statistics of an untrusted source in a "Plug & Play" quantum key distribution (QKD) system. In a passive scheme, three kinds of monitor mode can be adopted: average photon number (APN) monitor, photon number analyzer (PNA) and photon number distribution (PND) monitor. In this paper, the security analysis is rigorously given for APN monitor, while for PNA, the analysis including statistical fluctuation and random noise, is addressed with a confidence level. The results show that the PNA can achieve better performance than the APN monitor and can asymptotically approach the theoretical limit of the PND monitor. Also, the passive scheme with the PNA works efficiently when the signal-to-noise ratio ($R^{SN}$) is not too low and so is highly applicable to solve the untrusted source problem in the QKD system.

8 pages, 6 figures, published version

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Finite-key security analysis of quantum key distribution with imperfect light sources
• Passive scheme with a photon-number-resolving detector for monitoring the untrusted source in a plug-and-play quantum-key-distribution system
• Light Source Monitoring in Quantum Key Distribution with Single Photon Detector at Room Temperature