Regular Article

Decoy-state reference-frame-independent quantum key distribution with the heralded pair-coherent source

¹ Institute of Quantum Information and Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 210003 Nanjing, P.R. China
² Broadband Wireless Communication and Sensor Network Technology, Key Lab of Ministry of Education, NUPT, 210003 Nanjing, P.R. China
³ Telecommunication and Networks, National Engineering Research Center, NUPT, 210003 Nanjing, P.R. China

^a e-mail: cmz@njupt.edu.cn
^b e-mail: qinw@njupt.edu.cn

Received: 1 January 2019
Received in final form: 4 March 2019
Published online: 2 May 2019

Abstract

Reference-frame-independent quantum key distribution (RFI-QKD) can generate secure keys without the alignment of reference frames. Here, we propose to realize RFI-QKD with the heralded pair-coherent source (HPCS). Simulation results show that, considering the statistical fluctuations (e.g., the Gaussian distribution assumption of the channel fluctuations), the performance of RFI-QKD with HPCS outperforms that of the weak coherent source.