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A new scheme on improving the performance of the quantum key distribution with two-intensity weak coherent light

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new scheme on implementing the quantum key distribution with two-intensity weak coherent light and compare its performance with other existing methods. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that our new scheme can exceed almost all other existing decoy-state methods, e.g., the standard three-intensity decoy-state method and the usual passive decoy-state method, both in the transmission distance and in the final key generation rate, approaching very closely to the ideal case of using an infinite number of decoy states. Besides, we also consider the finite-size key effect. We demonstrate that under current experimental conditions, even when taking statistical fluctuation into account, a quite high key generation rate can still be obtained at very long transmission distance by applying our new scheme.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China through Grants Nos. 11274178, 11311140250, and 61475197, the Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions through Grants No. YX002001, and the Scientific Research Foundation of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications through Grant Nos. NY212011 and NY214142.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Signal Processing Transmission, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210003, China

    Feng Zhu, Xing-Yu Zhou, Ai-Ping Liu & Qin Wang

  2. Key Lab of Broadband Wireless Communication and Sensor Network Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Ministry of Education, Nanjing, 210003, China

    Feng Zhu, Xing-Yu Zhou, Ai-Ping Liu & Qin Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Qin Wang

Authors
  1. Feng Zhu
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  2. Xing-Yu Zhou
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  3. Ai-Ping Liu
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  4. Qin Wang
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Correspondence to Qin Wang.

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Zhu, F., Zhou, XY., Liu, AP. et al. A new scheme on improving the performance of the quantum key distribution with two-intensity weak coherent light. Quantum Inf Process 14, 3773–3784 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-015-1081-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-015-1081-2

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