Quantum-based security in optical fibre networks

Electronic communication is used everyday for a number of different applications. Some of the information transferred during these communications can be private requiring encryption and authentication protocols to keep this information secure. Although there are protocols today which provide some security, they are not necessarily unconditionally secure. Quantum based protocols on the other hand, can provide unconditionally secure protocols for encryption and authentication. Prior to this Thesis, only one experimental realisation of quantum digital signatures had been demonstrated. This used a lossy photonic device along with a quantum memory allowing two parties to test whether they were sent the same signature by a single sender, and also store the quantum states for measurement later. This restricted the demonstration to distances of only a few metres, and was tested with a primitive approximation of a quantum memory rather than an actual one. This Thesis presents an experimental realisation of a quantum digital signature protocol which removes the reliance on quantum memory at the receivers, making a major step towards practicality. By removing the quantum memory, it was also possible to perform the swap and comparison mechanism in a more efficient manner resulting in an experimental realisation of quantum digital signatures over 2 kilometres of optical fibre. Quantum communication protocols can be unconditionally secure, however the transmission distance is limited by loss in quantum channels. To overcome this loss in conventional channels an optical amplifier is used, however the added noise from these would swamp the quantum signal if directly used in quantum communications. This Thesis looked into probabilistic quantum amplification, with an experimental realisation of the state comparison amplifier, based on linear optical components and single-photon detectors. The state comparison amplifier operated by using the wellestablished techniques of optical coherent state comparison and weak subtraction to post-select the output and provide non-deterministic amplification with increased fidelity at a high repetition rate. The success rates of this amplifier were found to be orders of magnitude greater than other state of the art quantum amplifiers, due to its lack of requirement for complex quantum resources, such as single or entangled photon sources, and photon number resolving detectors

Dining Cryptographers are Practical

The dining cryptographers protocol provides information-theoretically secure sender and recipient untraceability. However, the protocol is considered to be impractical because a malicious participant may disrupt the communication. We propose an implementation which provides information-theoretical security for senders and recipients, and in which a disruptor with limited computational capabilities can easily be detected.Comment: 12 page

Quantum signature scheme with single photons

Quantum digital signature combines quantum theory with classical digital signature. The main goal of this field is to take advantage of quantum effects to provide unconditionally secure signature. We present a quantum signature scheme with message recovery without using entangle effect. The most important property of the proposed scheme is that it is not necessary for the scheme to use Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. The present scheme utilizes single photons to achieve the aim of signature and verification. The security of the scheme relies on the quantum one-time pad and quantum key distribution. The efficiency analysis shows that the proposed scheme is an efficient scheme

Quantum cryptography: key distribution and beyond

Uniquely among the sciences, quantum cryptography has driven both foundational research as well as practical real-life applications. We review the progress of quantum cryptography in the last decade, covering quantum key distribution and other applications.Comment: It's a review on quantum cryptography and it is not restricted to QK