Measurement-Device-Independenization of Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scheme to convert prepare-measure QKD protocols into measurement-device-independent ones without joint measurements, enhancing security and efficiency, and addresses vulnerabilities like Trojan horse and PNA attacks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel 'measurement-device-independenization' scheme that simplifies implementation and improves security of QKD protocols by avoiding joint measurements.

Findings

The scheme enables efficient MDI-QKD using weak coherence sources.

It maintains security against Trojan horse attacks.

Introduces photon-number-purification to close loopholes in existing protocols.

Abstract

Quantum key distribution(QKD) allows the legitimate partner to establish a secret key whose security only depends on physical laws. In recent years, research on QKD by employing insecure measurement devices, namely measurement-device-independent QKD (MDI-QKD) is increased. MDI-QKD removes all attacks on measurement devices and thus an untrusted third party can be employed for measuring. However, a weakness of previous MDI-QKD protocols is the need for joint measurements such as Bell measurements whose efficiency is low in practice. On the other hand, can all QKD protocols become measurement-device-independent remains a problem. In this paper, we present a scheme making prepare-measure QKD protocols become MDI-QKD protocols, called $'measurement-device-independenization'$, which does not need to employ joint measurements and could be efficiently implemented by weak coherence sources. The protocol might look like the detector-device-independent(DDI) protocols but it is also secure under the Trojan horse attack. To illustrate this, we investigate the photon-number-adding(PNA) attack and present a scheme, called $'photon-number-purification'$, which can also be employed to close loopholes for previous protocols such as DDI and plug-and-play ones.