Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 78
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-60655-2

Regular Article

Universally-composable finite-key analysis for efficient four-intensity decoy-state quantum key distribution

State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Engineering and Advanced Computing, Zhengzhou, Henan, P.R China

^a e-mail: gaoming@nudt.edu.cn

Received: 18 November 2015
Received in final form: 19 January 2016
Published online: 7 April 2016

Abstract

We propose an efficient four-intensity decoy-state BB84 protocol and derive concise security bounds for this protocol with the universally composable finite-key analysis method. Comparing with the efficient three-intensity protocol, we find that our efficient four-intensity protocol can increase the secret key rate by at least 30%. Particularly, this increasing rate of secret key rate will be raised as the transmission distance increases. At a large transmission distance, our efficient four-intensity protocol can improve the performance of quantum key distribution profoundly.