Floodlight Quantum Key Distribution: Demonstrating a New Framework for High-Rate Secure Communication

Abstract

Floodlight quantum key distribution (FL-QKD) is a radically different QKD paradigm that can achieve Gbit/s secret-key rates over metropolitan area distances without multiplexing [Phys. Rev. A 94, 012322 (2016)]. It is a two-way protocol that transmits many photons per bit duration and employs a high-gain optical amplifier, neither of which can be utilized by existing QKD protocols to mitigate channel loss. FL-QKD uses an optical bandwidth that is substantially larger than the modulation rate and performs decoding with a unique broadband homodyne receiver. Essential to FL-QKD is Alice's injection of photons from a photon-pair source--in addition to the light used for key generation--into the light she sends to Bob. This injection enables Alice and Bob to quantify Eve's intrusion and thus secure FL-QKD against collective attacks. Our proof-of-concept experiment included 10 dB propagation loss--equivalent to 50 km of low-loss fiber--and achieved a 55 Mbit/s secret-key rate (SKR) for a 100 Mbit/s modulation rate, as compared to the state-of-the-art system's 1 Mbit/s SKR for a 1 Gbit/s modulation rate [Opt. Express 21, 24550-24565 (2013)], representing ~500-fold and ~50-fold improvements in secret-key efficiency (SKE) (bits per channel use) and SKR (bits per second), respectively.

11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Advances in Quantum Cryptography
• Theory of channel simulation and bounds for private communication
• Entanglement-Assisted Communication Surpassing the Ultimate Classical Capacity
• Demonstration of Entanglement-Enhanced Covert Sensing
• Modular network for high-rate quantum conferencing
• Composable security analysis of continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with squeezed states for coherent attacks
• Composable security of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution without active symmetrization
• Additive Classical Capacity of Quantum Channels Assisted by Noisy Entanglement
• Gaussian one-way thermal quantum cryptography with finite-size effects
• Security-proof framework for two-way Gaussian quantum-key-distribution protocols
• High-order encoding schemes for floodlight quantum key distribution
• Large-Alphabet Encoding Schemes for Floodlight Quantum Key Distribution
• Resource-efficient energy test and parameter estimation in continuous-variable quantum key distribution