Round-Robin Differential Phase-Shift Quantum Key Distribution with Twisted Photons

Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) offers the possibility for two individuals to communicate a securely encrypted message. From the time of its inception in 1984 by Bennett and Brassard, QKD has been the result of intense research. One technical challenge is the monitoring of signal disturbance in a QKD system to bound the information leakage towards an unwanted eavesdropper. Recently, the round-robin differential phase-shift (RRDPS) protocol, which encodes bits of information in a high-dimensional state space, was proposed to solve this exact problem. Since its introduction, many realizations of the RRDPS protocol were demonstrated using trains of coherent pulses. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an implementation of the RRDPS protocol using the photonic orbital angular momentum degree of freedom. In particular, we show that Alice's generation stage and Bob's detection stage can each be reduced to a single phase element, greatly simplifying its implementation. Our scheme offers a practical demonstration of the RRDPS protocol which will suppress the need for monitoring signal disturbance in free-space channels.

arXiv comment5 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Two-photon interference: the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect
• Measuring azimuthal and radial modes of photons
• Experimental investigation of high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocols with twisted photons
• Performance of real-time adaptive optics compensation in a turbulent channel with high-dimensional spatial-mode encoding
• Secure Quantum Secret Sharing without Signal Disturbance Monitoring
• Full-field mode sorter using two optimized phase transformations for high-dimensional quantum cryptography
• Security of round-robin differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution protocol with correlated light sources
• Refined security proof of the round-robin differential phase shift quantum key distribution and its improved performance in the finite-sized case
• Randomised benchmarking for universal qudit gates
• High-dimensional Encoding in the Round-Robin Differential-Phase-Shift Protocol