Practical post-processing for quantum-key-distribution experiments

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical, comprehensive post-processing method for quantum key distribution experiments that accounts for real-world issues, finite key sizes, and security quantification, making QKD more implementable.

Contribution

It integrates existing theoretical results with new developments to produce a complete, practical recipe for classical post-processing in QKD, considering finite-size effects and security.

Findings

Finite-size effects mainly stem from phase error estimation.

The method is applicable to BB84 protocol with single or entangled photon sources.

Security of the final key is quantified as universally composable.

Abstract

Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises unconditionally secure key generation between two distant parties by wisely exploiting properties of quantum mechanics. In QKD, experimental measurements on quantum states are transformed to a secret key and this has to be done in accordance with a security proof. Unfortunately, many theoretical proofs are not readily implementable in experiments and do not consider all practical issues. Therefore, in order to bridge this "practical gap", we integrate a few existing theoretical results together with new developments, in effect producing a simple and complete recipe for classical post-processing that one can follow to derive a secret key from the measurement outcomes in an actual QKD experiment. This integration is non-trivial and our consideration is both practical and comprehensive in the sense that we take into account the finiteness of the key length and consider the effects on security of several essential primitives (including authentication, error handling, and privacy amplification). Furthermore, we quantify the security of the final secret key that is universally composable. We show that the finite-size effect mainly comes from phase error estimation. Our result is applicable to the BB84 protocol with a single or entangled photon source.