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Practical long-distance twin-field quantum digital signatures

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Abstract

Quantum digital signatures (QDSs) play a crucial role in modern communication. Generally, the performance of QDSs depends on the key generation protocol (KGP). However, as a part of quantum key distribution (QKD), the KGP is restricted by the fundamental rate-loss bound (PLOB bound). Fortunately, recent work indicates that twin-field QKD (TF-QKD) can overcome this bound. In general, the users in standard decoy-state TF-QKD protocols are assumed to emit a weak coherent-state source with continuously randomized phase; however, this assumption is not practically available in experimental implementation and may open a security loophole for eavesdroppers. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, this work presents two practical TF-QDS protocols that can be realized with common optical components and further implemented in a quantum fibre network. One protocol uses a continuous-phase-randomized source but does not perform phase post-selection, called Protocol I. The other protocol uses a discrete-phase-randomized source with phase post-selection, called Protocol II. Numerical simulation results show that the two proposed TF-QDS protocols can improve the performance of QDS in terms of both the signature rate and secure transmission distance compared with BB84-QDS and measurement-device-independent QDS.

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Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Chunmei Zhang for discussions. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61801385, 62071381), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 221628), Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Grant No. 2020JQ-602) and Foundation of Shaanxi Province Education Department.

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  1. Jia-Hui Xie have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Science and Technology, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710127, People’s Republic of China

    Ming-Hui Zhang, Jia-Hui Xie, Jia-Yao Wu, Lin-Yang Yue, Chen He, Zheng-Wen Cao & Jin-Ye Peng

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  1. Ming-Hui Zhang
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Zhang, MH., Xie, JH., Wu, JY. et al. Practical long-distance twin-field quantum digital signatures. Quantum Inf Process 21, 150 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-022-03489-7

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