1. Pathways for entanglement based quantum communication in the face of high noise
- Author
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Chuan-Feng Li, Chao Zhang, Marcus Huber, Yu Guo, Guang-Can Guo, Fang-Xiang Wang, Wen-Bo Xing, Xiaoqin Gao, Yun-Feng Huang, Xiao-Min Hu, Matej Pivoluska, Cen-Xiao Huang, and Bi-Heng Liu
- Subjects
Quantum Physics ,Photon ,Computer science ,General Physics and Astronomy ,Key distribution ,FOS: Physical sciences ,TheoryofComputation_GENERAL ,Quantum entanglement ,Quantum key distribution ,Topology ,01 natural sciences ,010305 fluids & plasmas ,Noise ,Qubit ,0103 physical sciences ,Key (cryptography) ,010306 general physics ,Quantum information science ,Quantum Physics (quant-ph) - Abstract
Entanglement based quantum communication offers an increased level of security in practical secret shared key distribution. One of the fundamental principles enabling this security -- the fact that interfering with one photon will destroy entanglement and thus be detectable -- is also the greatest obstacle. Random encounters of traveling photons, losses and technical imperfections make noise an inevitable part of any quantum communication scheme, severely limiting distance, key rate and environmental conditions in which QKD can be employed. Using photons entangled in their spatial degree of freedom, we show that the increased noise resistance of high-dimensional entanglement, can indeed be harnessed for practical key distribution schemes. We perform quantum key distribution in eight entangled paths at various levels of environmental noise and show key rates that, even after error correction and privacy amplification, still exceed $1$ bit per photon pair and furthermore certify a secure key at noise levels that would prohibit comparable qubit based schemes from working., 14 pages, 3 figures
- Published
- 2020