Practical asynchronous measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with advantage distillation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that integrating advantage distillation into asynchronous measurement-device-independent QKD significantly improves its performance, extending transmission distances and enabling key generation under challenging conditions.

Contribution

The paper introduces advantage distillation into AMDI-QKD, accounting for finite-key effects, and shows practical improvements in transmission distance and error tolerance.

Findings

Extended transmission distance by 16 km with finite keys

Enabled key generation at 10% misalignment error

Facilitated practical implementation with refined post-processing

Abstract

The advantage distillation (AD) method has proven effective in improving the performance of quantum key distribution (QKD). In this paper, we introduce the AD method into a recently proposed asynchronous measurement-device-independent (AMDI) QKD protocol, taking finite-key effects into account. Simulation results show that the AD method significantly enhances AMDIQKD, e.g., extending the transmission distance by 16 km with a total pulse count of N = 7.24*10^13, and enables AMDI-QKD, previously unable to generate keys, to generate keys with a misalignment error rate of 10%. As the AD method can be directly integrated into the current system through refined post-processing, our results facilitate the practical implementation of AMDI-QKD in various applications, particularly in scenarios with high channel losses and misalignment errors.