Efficient quantum key distribution over a collective noise channel

We present two efficient quantum key distribution schemes over two different collective-noise channels. The accepted hypothesis of collective noise is that photons travel inside a time window small compared to the variation of noise. Noiseless subspaces are made up of two Bell states and the spatial degree of freedom is introduced to form two nonorthogonal bases. Although these protocols resort to entangled states for encoding the key bit, the receiver is only required to perform single-particle product measurements and there is no basis mismatch. Moreover, the detection is passive as the receiver does not switch his measurements between two conjugate measurement bases to get the key.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure; the revised version of the paper published in Phys. Rev. A 78, 022321 (2008). Some negligible errors on the error rates of eavesdropping check are correcte

A comparative study of protocols for secure quantum communication under noisy environment: single-qubit-based protocols versus entangled-state-based protocols

The effect of noise on various protocols of secure quantum communication has been studied. Specifically, we have investigated the effect of amplitude damping, phase damping, squeezed generalized amplitude damping, Pauli type as well as various collective noise models on the protocols of quantum key distribution, quantum key agreement,quantum secure direct quantum communication and quantum dialogue. From each type of protocol of secure quantum communication, we have chosen two protocols for our comparative study; one based on single qubit states and the other one on entangled states. The comparative study reported here has revealed that single-qubit-based schemes are generally found to perform better in the presence of amplitude damping, phase damping, squeezed generalized amplitude damping noises, while entanglement-based protocols turn out to be preferable in the presence of collective noises. It is also observed that the effect of noise entirely depends upon the number of rounds of quantum communication involved in a scheme of quantum communication. Further, it is observed that squeezing, a completely quantum mechanical resource present in the squeezed generalized amplitude channel, can be used in a beneficial way as it may yield higher fidelity compared to the corresponding zero squeezing case.Comment: 23 pages 7 figure

Which verification qubits perform best for secure communication in noisy channel?

In secure quantum communication protocols, a set of single qubits prepared using 2 or more mutually unbiased bases or a set of $n$-qubit ($n\geq2$) entangled states of a particular form are usually used to form a verification string which is subsequently used to detect traces of eavesdropping. The qubits that form a verification string are referred to as decoy qubits, and there exists a large set of different quantum states that can be used as decoy qubits. In the absence of noise, any choice of decoy qubits provides equivalent security. In this paper, we examine such equivalence for noisy environment (e.g., in amplitude damping, phase damping, collective dephasing and collective rotation noise channels) by comparing the decoy-qubit assisted schemes of secure quantum communication that use single qubit states as decoy qubits with the schemes that use entangled states as decoy qubits. Our study reveals that the single qubit assisted scheme perform better in some noisy environments, while some entangled qubits assisted schemes perform better in other noisy environments. Specifically, single qubits assisted schemes perform better in amplitude damping and phase damping noisy channels, whereas a few Bell-state-based decoy schemes are found to perform better in the presence of the collective noise. Thus, if the kind of noise present in a communication channel (i.e., the characteristics of the channel) is known or measured, then the present study can provide the best choice of decoy qubits required for implementation of schemes of secure quantum communication through that channel.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Asymmetric Quantum Dialogue in Noisy Environment

A notion of asymmetric quantum dialogue (AQD) is introduced. Conventional protocols of quantum dialogue are essentially symmetric as both the users (Alice and Bob) can encode the same amount of classical information. In contrast, the scheme for AQD introduced here provides different amount of communication powers to Alice and Bob. The proposed scheme, offers an architecture, where the entangled state and the encoding scheme to be shared between Alice and Bob depends on the amount of classical information they want to exchange with each other. The general structure for the AQD scheme has been obtained using a group theoretic structure of the operators introduced in (Shukla et al., Phys. Lett. A, 377 (2013) 518). The effect of different types of noises (e.g., amplitude damping and phase damping noise) on the proposed scheme is investigated, and it is shown that the proposed AQD is robust and uses optimized amount of quantum resources.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles and linear optics

Quantum communication holds a promise for absolutely secure transmission of secret messages and faithful transfer of unknown quantum states. Photonic channels appear to be very attractive for physical implementation of quantum communication. However, due to losses and decoherence in the channel, the communication fidelity decreases exponentially with the channel length. We describe a scheme that allows to implement robust quantum communication over long lossy channels. The scheme involves laser manipulation of atomic ensembles, beam splitters, and single-photon detectors with moderate efficiencies, and therefore well fits the status of the current experimental technology. We show that the communication efficiency scale polynomially with the channel length thereby facilitating scalability to very long distances.Comment: 2 tex files (Main text + Supplement), 4 figure