A novel secure communication protocol is presented, based on an entangled pair of qubits and allowing asymptotically secure key distribution and quasi-secure direct communication. Since the information is transferred in a deterministic manner, no qubits have to be discarded. The transmission of information is instantaneous, i.e. the information can be decoded during the transmission. The security against arbitrary eavesdropping attacks is provided. In case of eavesdropping attacks with full information gain, the detection rate is 50% per control transmission. The experimental realization of the protocol is feasible with relatively small effort, which also makes commercial applications conceivable.
In this letter a deterministic secure direct bidirectional communication protocol is proposed by using the quantum entanglement and local unitary operations on one photon of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) photon pair.
This paper considers the use an entanglement breaking channel in the construction of a secure bit-commitment protocol. It is shown that this can be done via a depolarizing quantum channel.
Several theoretical Deterministic Secure Direct Bidirectional Communication protocols are generalized to improve their capacities by introducing the superdense-coding in the case of high-dimension quantum states.
An unconditionally secure quantum cion tossing protocol for two remote participants via entangled swapping is presented. The security of this protocol is guaranteed by the nonlocal property of quantum entanglement and the classical complexity.
In this paper, we present a quantum secure multi-party summation protocol, which allows multiple mutually distrustful parties to securely compute the summation of their secret data. In the presented protocol, a semitrusted third party is introduced to help multiple parties to achieve this secure task. Besides, the entanglement swapping of $d$-level cat states and Bell states is employed to securely transmit message between each party and the semitrusted third party. At last, its security against some common attacks is analyzed, which shows that the presented protocol is secure in theory.
We show a deterministic secure direct communication protocol using single qubit in mixed state. The security of this protocol is based on the security proof of BB84 protocol. It can be realized with current technologies.
We leverage spectral assets of entanglement and spatial switching to realize a flexible distribution map for cloud-to-edge and edge-to-edge quantum pipes that seed IT-secure primitives. Dynamic bandwidth allocation and co-existence with classical control are demonstrated.
Extending the eavesdropping strategy devised by Zhang, Li and Guo [Phys. Rev. A 63, 036301 (2001)], we show that the multiparty quantum communication protocol based on entanglement swapping, which was proposed by Cabello [quant-ph/0009025], is not secure. We modify the protocol so that entanglement swapping can secure multiparty quantum communication, such as multiparty quantum key distribution and quantum secret sharing of classical information, and show that the modified protocol is secure against the Zhang-Li-Guo's strategy for eavesdropping as well as the basic intercept-resend attack.
We propose two deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) protocols employing three-qubit GHZ-like states and five-qubit Brown states as quantum channels for secure transmission of information in units of two bits and three bits using multipartite teleportation schemes developed here. In these schemes, the sender's capability in selecting quantum channels and the measuring bases leads to improved qubit efficiency of the protocols.
In all existing protocols of private communication with encryption and decryption, the pre-shared key can be used for only one time. We give a deterministic quantum key expansion protocol where the pre-shared key can be recycled. Our protocol is exponentially secure. Our protocol costs less qubits and almost zero classical communications with authentication steps being included. Since our protocol can distribute the deterministic bits, it can also be used for direct communication.
We report two key distribution schemes achieved by swapping quantum entanglement. Using two Bell states, two bits of secret key can be shared between two distant parties that play symmetric and equal roles. We also address eavesdropping attacks against the schemes.
In this paper, a bidirectional quantum teleportation protocol based on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs and entanglement swapping is proposed. In this scheme, two users can simultaneously transmit an unknown single-qubit state to each other. The implementation of the proposed scheme is easier in experiment as compared to previous work. By utilizing this bidirectional quantum teleportation protocol, a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication scheme without carrying secret message is presented. Therefore, in the case of using perfect quantum channel, the protocol is completely secure…
We explore the use of the resource of intra-particle entanglement for secure quantum key distribution in the device-independent scenario. By virtue of the local nature of such entanglement, Bell tests must be implemented locally, which leads to a natural decoupling of device errors from channel errors. We consider a side channel attack on the sender's state preparation device, for which the intra-particle-entanglement based scheme is shown to be more secure than the one that uses separable states. Of practical relevance is the fact that such entanglement can be easily generated using linear op…
I consider the use of entanglement between two parties to enable one to authenticate her identity to another over a quantum communication channel. Exploiting the phenomenon of entanglement-catalyzed transformations between pure states gives a potentially reusable entangled identification token. In analyzing this, I consider the independently interesting problem of the best possible approximation to a given pure entangled state realizable using local actions and classical communication by parties sharing a different entangled state.
It is shown how the evidence state space in quantum bit commitment may be made to depend on the bit value 0 or 1 with split entangled pairs. As a consequence, one can obtain a protocol that is perfectly concealing, but is also $ε$-binding because the bit-value dependent evidence space prevents the committing party from cheating by means of a local transformation that is independent of the part of evidence state space that has never been in his possession.
We show an improved ping-pong protocol which is based on the protocol showed by Kim Bostrom and Timo Felbinger [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 187902 (2002); quant-ph/0209040]. We show that our protocol is asymptotically secure key distribution and quasisecure direct communication using a single photon resource. And this protocol can be can be carried out with great efficiency and speed using today's technology.
We demonstrate that a necessary precondition for unconditionally secure quantum key distribution is that sender and receiver can use the available measurement results to prove the presence of entanglement in a quantum state that is effectively distributed between them. One can thus systematically search for entanglement using the class of entanglement witness operators that can be constructed from the observed data. We apply such analysis to two well-known quantum key distribution protocols, namely the 4-state protocol and the 6-state protocol. As a special case, we show that, for some asymmet…
We demonstrate a prototype-implementation of deterministic information encoding for quantum key distribution (QKD) following the ping-pong coding protocol [K. Bostroem, T. Felbinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 187902-1]. Due to the deterministic nature of this protocol the need for post-processing the key is distinctly reduced compared to non-deterministic protocols. In the course of our implementation we analyze the practicability of the protocol and discuss some security aspects of information transfer in such a deterministic scheme.
We propose a protocol for deterministic communication that does not make use of entanglement. It exploits nonorthogonal states in a two-way quantum channel attaining significant improvement of security and efficiency over already known cryptographic protocols. The presented scheme, being deterministic, can be devoted to direct communication as well as to key distribution, and its experimental realization is feasible with present day technology.
We characterize the set of shared quantum states which contain a cryptographically private key. This allows us to recast the theory of privacy as a paradigm closely related to that used in entanglement manipulation. It is shown that one can distill an arbitrarily secure key from bound entangled states. There are also states which have less distillable private key than the entanglement cost of the state. In general the amount of distillable key is bounded from above by the relative entropy of entanglement. Relationships between distillability and distinguishability are found for a class of stat…
Recently, Hassanpour and Houshmand have proposed a protocol of controlled deterministic secure quantum communication (Quant. Info. Process, DOI 10.1007/s11128-014-0866-z (2014)). The authors compared the efficiency of their protocol with that of two other existing protocols and claimed that their protocol is efficient. Here, we have shown that the efficiency of Hassanpour Houshmand (HH) protocol is not high, and there exist several approaches through which more efficient protocols for the same task can be designed. To establish this point, we have proposed an efficient protocol of controlled d…
A novel communication protocol based on an entangled pair of qubits is presented, allowing secure direct communication from one party to another without the need for a shared secret key. Since the information is transferred in a deterministic manner, no qubits have to be discarded and every qubit carries message information. The security of the transfer against active and passive eavesdropping attacks is provided. The detection rate of active attacks is at least 25%. The protocol works with a quantum efficiency of 1 bit per qubit transmitted.
In a recent comment, it has been shown that in a quantum secret sharing protocol proposed in [S. Bagherinezhad, V. Karimipour, Phys. Rev. {\bf A}, 67, 044302, (2003)], one of the receivers can cheat by splitting the entanglement of the carrier and intercepting the secret, without being detected. In this reply we show that a simple modification of the protocol prevents the receivers from this kind of cheating.
Quantum metrology and quantum communications are typically considered as distinct applications in the broader portfolio of quantum technologies. However, there are cases where we might want to combine the two and recent proposals have shown how this might be achieved in entanglement-based systems. Here we present an entanglement-free alternative that has advantages in terms of simplicity and practicality, requiring only individual qubits to be transmitted. We demonstrate the performance of the scheme in both the low and high data limits, showing quantum advantages both in terms of measurement …
We propose a scheme for quantum cryptography that uses the squeezing phase of a two-mode squeezed state to transmit information securely between two parties. The basic principle behind this scheme is the fact that each mode of the squeezed field by itself does not contain any information regarding the squeezing phase. The squeezing phase can only be obtained through a joint measurement of the two modes. This, combined with the fact that it is possible to perform remote squeezing measurements, makes it possible to implement a secure quantum communication scheme in which a deterministic signal c…
We study the problem of secret key distillation from bipartite states in the scenario where Alice and Bob can only perform measurements at the single-copy level and classically process the obtained outcomes. Even with these limitations, secret bits can be asymptotically distilled by the honest parties from any two-qubit entangled state, under any individual attack. Our results point out a complete equivalence between two-qubit entanglement and secure key distribution: a key can be established through a one-qubit channel if and only if it allows to distribute entanglement. These results can be …
We present a quantum secure direct communication protocol and a multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol based on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs and entanglement swapping. The present quantum secure direct communication protocol makes use of the ideal of block transmission. We also point out that the sender can encode his or her secret message without ensuring the security of the quantum channel firstly. In the multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol, the communication parties adopt checking mode or encoding mode with a certain probability. It is not necessary for the protocol to perform l…
Superdense coding uses entanglement as a resource to communicate classical information securely through quantum channels. A superdense coding method is optimal when its capacity reaches Holevo bound. We show that for optimality, maximal entanglement is a necessity across the bipartition of Alice and Bob, but neither absolute nor genuine multipartite entanglement is required. Unlike the previous schemes, which can transmit either even or odd bits of information, we have demonstrated a generalized dense coding protocol using the genuine multipartite entangled GHZ state to send arbitrary informat…
It is proven that recently introduced states with perfectly secure bits of cryptographic key (private states representing secure bit) [K. Horodecki et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 160502 (2005)] as well as its multipartite and higher dimension generalizations always represent distillable entanglement. The corresponding lower bounds on distillable entanglement are provided. We also present a simple alternative proof that for any bipartite quantum state entanglement cost is an upper bound on distillable cryptographic key in bipartite scenario.
We present a deterministic entanglement purification protocol (EPP) working for currently available experiment technique. In this protocol, we resort to the robust time-bin entanglement to purify the polarization entanglement determinately, which is quite different from the previous EPPs. After purification, one can obtain a completely pure maximally entangled pair with the success probability of 100%, in principle. As the maximal polarization entanglement is of vice importance in long-distance quantum communication, this protocol may have a wide application.
In this paper, a three-party secure semiquantum summation protocol, which can calculate the modulo 2 addition of the private bits from one quantum participant and two classical participants, is constructed by only using single qubits as the initial quantum resource. This protocol needs none of quantum entanglement swapping, the unitary operation or a pre-shared private key. This protocol only requires the quantum participant to perform the Z basis measurements, the X basis measurements and the Bell basis measurements. Compared with the existing only semiquantum summation protocol (Int J Theor …
We present an efficient entanglement purification protocol with hyperentanglement in which additional spatial entanglement is utilized to purify the two-particle polarization-entangled state. The bit-flip error and phase-flip error can be corrected and eliminated in one step. Two remote parties can obtainmaximally entangled polarization states deterministically and only passive linear optics are employed. We also discuss the protocol with practical quantum source and noisy channel.
We present a quantum secure direct communication scheme achieved by swapping quantum entanglement. In this scheme a set of ordered Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs is used as a quantum information channel for sending secret messages directly. After insuring the safety of the quantum channel, the sender Alice encodes the secret messages directly by applying a series local operations on her particles sequence according to their stipulation. Using three EPR pairs, three bits of secret classical information can be faithfully transmitted from Alice to remote Bob without revealing any information…
In single-qubit quantum secret sharing, a secret is shared between N parties via manipulation and measurement of one qubit at a time. Each qubit is sent to all N parties in sequence; the secret is encoded in the first participant's preparation of the qubit state and the subsequent participants' choices of state rotation or measurement basis. We present a protocol for single-qubit quantum secret sharing using polarization entanglement of photon pairs produced in type-I spontaneous parametric downconversion. We investigate the protocol's security against eavesdropping attack under common experim…
We present a security proof for establishing private entanglement by means of recurrence-type entanglement distillation protocols over noisy quantum channels. We consider protocols where the local devices are imperfect, and show that nonetheless a confidential quantum channel can be established, and used to e.g. perform distributed quantum computation in a secure manner. While our results are not fully device independent (which we argue to be unachievable in settings with quantum outputs), our proof holds for arbitrary channel noise and noisy local operations, and even in the case where the ea…
Two deterministic secure quantum communication schemes are proposed, one based on pure entangled states and the other on $d$-dimensional single-photon states. In these two schemes, only single-photon measurements are required for the two authorized users, which makes the schemes more convenient than others in practical applications. Although each qubit can be read out after a transmission of additional classical bit, it is unnecessary for the users to transmit qubits double the distance between the sender and the receiver, which will increase their bit rate and their security. The parties use …
Entanglement plays a crucial role in the security of quantum key distribution. A secret key can only be obtained by two parties if there exists a corresponding entanglement-based description of the protocol in which entanglement is witnessed, as shown by Curty et al (2004). Here we investigate the role of entanglement for the generalization of quantum key distribution to the multipartite scenario, namely conference key agreement. In particular, we ask whether the strongest form of multipartite entanglement, namely genuine multipartite entanglement, is necessary to establish a conference key. W…
In a recent paper [S. Bagherinezhad and V. Karimipour, Phys. Rev. A 67, 044302 (2003)], a quantum secret sharing protocol based on reusable GHZ states was proposed. However, in this comment, it is shown that this protocol is insecure because a cheater can gain all the secret bits before sharing, while introducing one data bit error at most in the whole communication, which makes the cheater avoid the detection by the communication parities.
We present a deterministic secure direct communication scheme via entanglement swapping, where a set of ordered maximally entangled three-particle states (GHZ states), initially shared by three spatially separated parties, Alice, Bob and Charlie, functions as a quantum information channel. After ensuring the safety of the quantum channel, Alice and Bob apply a series local operations on their respective particles according to the tripartite stipulation and the secret message they both want to send to Charlie. By three Alice, Bob and Charlie's Bell measurement results, Charlie is able to infer …
Blind quantum computation is a new secure quantum computing protocol where a client, who does not have enough quantum technologies at her disposal, can delegate her quantum computation to a server, who has a fully-fledged quantum computer, in such a way that the server cannot learn anything about client's input, output, and program. If the client interacts with only a single server, the client has to have some minimum quantum power, such as the ability of emitting randomly rotated single-qubit states or the ability of measuring states. If the client interacts with two servers who share Bell pa…
Blind quantum computation (BQC) provides an efficient method for the client who does not have enough sophisticated technology and knowledge to perform universal quantum computation. The single-server BQC protocol requires the client to have some minimum quantum ability, while the double-server BQC protocol makes the client's device completely classical, resorting to the pure and clean Bell-state shared by two servers. In this paper, we provide a deterministic entanglement distillation protocol in a practical noisy environment for the double-server BQC protocol. This protocol can obtain the pur…
Based on an EPR pair of qubits and allowing asymptotically secure key distribution, a secure communication protocol is presented. Bob sends either of the EPR pair qubits to Alice. Alice receives the travel qubit. Then she can encode classical information by local unitary operations on this travel qubit. Alice send the qubit back to Bob. Bob can get Alice's information by measurement on the two photons in Bell operator basis. If Eve in line, she has no access to Bob's home qubit. All her operations are restricted to the travel qubit. In order to find out which opeartion Alice performs, Eve's op…
Two protocols for deterministic secure quantum communication (DSQC) using GHZ-like states have been proposed. It is shown that one of these protocols can be modified to an equivalent but more efficient protocol of quantum secure direct communication (QSDC). Security and efficiency of the proposed protocols are analyzed in detail and are critically compared with the existing protocols. It is shown that the proposed protocols are highly efficient. It is also shown that all the physical systems where dense coding is possible can be used to design maximally efficient protocol of DSQC and QSDC. Fur…
Deterministic extraction of Bell pairs from a finite number of partially entangled pairs is discussed. We derive the maximum number of Bell pairs that can be obtained with probability 1 by local operations and classical communication. It is proved that the optimal deterministic concentration needs only a two-pair collective manipulation in each step, and that a collective manipulation of all entangled pairs is not necessary. Finally, this scheme reveals an entanglement measure for the deterministic concentration.
To construct a quantum network with many end users, it is critical to have a cost-efficient way to distribute entanglement over different network ends. We demonstrate an entanglement access network, where the expensive resource, the entangled photon source at the telecom wavelength and the core communication channel, is shared by many end users. Using this cost-efficient entanglement access network, we report experimental demonstration of a secure multiparty computation protocol, the privacy-preserving secure sum problem, based on the network quantum cryptography.
A deterministic direct quantum communication protocol by using swapping quantum entanglement and local unitary operations is proposed in this paper. A set of ordered EPR pairs in one of the four Bell states is used. For each pair, each of the two legitimate users owns a photon of the entangled pair via quantum channel. The pairs are divided into two types of group, i.e., the checking groups and the encoding-decoding groups. In the checking groups, taking advantage of the swapping quantum entanglement and Alice's (the message sender's) public announcement, the eavesdropping can be detected prov…
We prove that sufficiently many copies of a bipartite entangled pure state can always be transformed into some copies of another one with certainty by local quantum operations and classical communication. The efficiency of such a transformation is characterized by deterministic entanglement exchange rate, and it is proved to be always positive and bounded from top by the infimum of the ratios of Renyi's entropies of source state and target state. A careful analysis shows that the deterministic entanglement exchange rate cannot be increased even in the presence of catalysts. As an application, …
We present a one-step deterministic entanglement purification protocol with linear optics and postselection. Compared with the Simon-Pan protocol (Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 257901 (2002)), this one-step protocol has some advantages. First, it can get a maximally entangled pair with only one step, not only improve the fidelity of less-entangled photon pairs by performing the protocol repeatedly. Second, it works in a deterministic way, not a probabilistic one, which will reduce a great deal of entanglement resources. Third, it does not require the polarization state be entangled, only spatial entang…
We outline a proof that teleportation with a single particle is in principle just as reliable as with two particles. We thereby hope to dispel the skepticism surrounding single-photon entanglement as a valid resource in quantum information. A deterministic Bell state analyzer is proposed which uses only classical resources, namely coherent states, a Kerr non-linearity, and a two-level atom.
The ``impossibility proof'' on unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is examined. It is shown that the possibility of juxtaposing quantum and classical randomness has not been properly taken into account. A specific protocol that beats entanglement cheating with entanglement is proven to be unconditionally secure.
We propose a scheme that employs dissipation to deterministically generate entanglement in an ensemble of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms. With a combination of microwave driving between different Rydberg levels and a resonant laser coupling to a short lived atomic state, the ensemble can be driven towards a dark steady state that entangles all atoms. The long-range resonant dipole-dipole interaction between different Rydberg states extends the entanglement beyond the van der Walls interaction range with perspectives for entangling large and distant ensembles.
High-dimensional quantum key distribution (HDQKD) offers the possibility of high secure-key rate with high photon-information efficiency. We consider HDQKD based on the time-energy entanglement produced by spontaneous parametric downconversion, and show that it is secure against collective attacks. Its security rests upon visibility data -- obtained from Franson and conjugate-Franson interferometers -- that probe photon-pair frequency correlations and arrival-time correlations. From these measurements an upper bound can be established on the eavesdropper's Holevo information by translating the…
By exactly solving the underlying Schödinger equation we show that one and the same resonant cavity can be used as a catalyst to maximally entangle atoms of two nonidentical groups. The generation scheme is realistic and advantageous in the sense that it is deterministic, efficient, scalable and immune from decoherence effects.
Hybrid matter-photon entanglement is the building block for quantum networks. It is very favorable if the entanglement can be prepared with a high probability. In this paper, we report the deterministic creation of entanglement between an atomic ensemble and a single photon by harnessing Rydberg blockade. We design a scheme that creates entanglement between a single photon's temporal modes and the Rydberg levels that host a collective excitation, using a process of cyclical retrieving and patching. The hybrid entanglement is tested via retrieving the atomic excitation as a second photon and pe…
A multipartner secure direct communication protocol is presented, using quantum nonlocality. Security of this protocol is based on `High fidelity implies low entropy'. When the entanglement was successfully distributed, anyone of the multipartner can send message secretly by using local operation and reliable public channel. Since message transfered only by using local operation and public channel after entanglement successfully distributed, so this protocol can protect the communication against destroying-travel-qubit-type attack.
We present a protocol for sending a message over a quantum channel with different layers of security that will prevent an eavesdropper from deciphering the message without being detected. The protocol has two versions where the bits are encoded in either pairs of entangled photons or separate photons. Unlike many other protocols, it requires a one-way, rather than a two-way, quantum channel and does not require a quantum memor. A quantum key is used to encrypt the message and both the key and the message are sent over the quantum channle with the same quantum encoding technique. The key is sen…
This paper introduces a new quantum protocol for secure direct communication. This protocol is based on Entanglement and Super-Dense coding. In this paper we present some basic definitions of entanglement in quantum mechanics, present how to use the maximally entangled states known as Bell States, and super dense coding technique to achieve secure direct message communication. Finally, we will apply some error models that could affect the transmission of the quantum data on the quantum channels, and how to treat these errors and acquire a safe transmission of the data.
The development of efficient network nodes is a key element for the realisation of quantum networks which promise great capabilities as distributed quantum computing or provable secure communication. We report the realisation of a quantum network node using a trapped ion inside a fiber-based Fabry-Perot cavity. We show the generation of deterministic entanglement at a high fidelity of $ 91.2(2) $\,\% between a trapped Yb--ion and a photon emitted into the resonator mode. We achieve a success probability for generation and detection of entanglement for a single shot of $ 2.5 \cdot 10^{-3}$ resu…
Entanglement swapping, the process to entangle two particles without coupling them in any way, is one of the most striking manifestations of the quantum-mechanical nonlocal characteristic. Besides fundamental interest, this process has applications in complex entanglement manipulation and quantum communication. Here we report a high-fidelity, unconditional entanglement swapping experiment in a superconducting circuit. The measured concurrence characterizing the qubit-qubit entanglement produced by swapping is above 0.75, confirming most of the entanglement of one qubit with its partner is dete…
