Device-independent two-party cryptography secure against sequential attacks

The goal of two-party cryptography is to enable two parties, Alice and Bob, to solve common tasks without the need for mutual trust. Examples of such tasks are private access to a database, and secure identification. Quantum communication enables security for all of these problems in the noisy-storage model by sending more signals than the adversary can store in a certain time frame. Here, we initiate the study of device-independent protocols for two-party cryptography in the noisy-storage model. Specifically, we present a relatively easy to implement protocol for a cryptographic building block known as weak string erasure and prove its security even if the devices used in the protocol are prepared by the dishonest party. Device-independent two-party cryptography is made challenging by the fact that Alice and Bob do not trust each other, which requires new techniques to establish security. We fully analyse the case of memoryless devices (for which sequential attacks are optimal) and the case of sequential attacks for arbitrary devices. The key ingredient of the proof, which might be of independent interest, is an explicit (and tight) relation between the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality observed by Alice and Bob and uncertainty generated by Alice against Bob who is forced to measure his system before finding out Alice's setting (guessing with postmeasurement information). In particular, we show that security is possible for arbitrarily small violation.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, published versio

Analytic and nearly optimal self-testing bounds for the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt and Mermin inequalities

Self-testing refers to the phenomenon that certain extremal quantum correlations (almost) uniquely identify the quantum system under consideration. For instance observing the maximal violation of the CHSH inequality certifies that the two parties share a singlet. While self-testing results are known for several classes of states, in many cases they are only applicable if the observed statistics are almost perfect, which makes them unsuitable for practical applications. Practically relevant self-testing bounds are much less common and moreover they all result from a single numerical method (with one exception which we discuss in detail). In this work we present a new technique for proving analytic self-testing bounds of practically relevant robustness. We obtain improved bounds for the case of self-testing the singlet using the CHSH inequality (in particular we show that non-trivial fidelity with the singlet can be achieved as long as the violation exceeds $\beta^{*} = (16 + 14 \sqrt{2})/17 \approx 2.11$). In case of self-testing the tripartite GHZ state using the Mermin inequality we derive a bound which not only improves on previously known results but turns out to be tight. We discuss other scenarios to which our technique can be immediately applied.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. v2: fixed an inconsistency in specifying the extraction channel, improved presentation; v3: published versio

Near-maximal two-photon entanglement for quantum communications at 2.1 μm

Owing to a reduced solar background and low propagation losses in the atmosphere, the 2- to 2.5-μm waveband is a promising candidate for daylight quantum communication. This spectral region also offers low losses and low dispersion in hollow-core fibers and in silicon waveguides. We demonstratenear-maximally entangled photon pairs at 2.1 μm that could support device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD), assuming sufficiently high channel efficiencies. The state corresponds to a positive secure-key rate (0.254 bits/pair, with a quantum bit error rate of 3.8%) based on measurements in alaboratory setting with minimal channel loss and transmission distance. This is promising for the future implementation of DIQKD at 2.1 μm