https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-025-01000-2
Regular Article - Quantum Information
New protocols for quantum key distribution with explicit upper and lower bound on secret key rate
Department of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, A 10, Sector 62, 201309, Noida, UP, India
Received:
20
August
2024
Accepted:
9
April
2025
Published online:
10
May
2025
We present two new schemes for quantum key distribution (QKD) that neither require entanglement nor an ideal single-photon source, making them implementable with commercially available single-photon sources. These protocols are shown to be secure against multiple attacks, including intercept-resend and a class of collective attacks. We derive bounds on the key rate and demonstrate that a specific type of classical pre-processing can increase the tolerable error limit. A trade-off between quantum resources and information revealed to an eavesdropper (Eve) is observed, with higher efficiency achievable through the use of additional quantum resources. Specifically, our proposed protocols outperform the SARG04 protocol in terms of efficiency at the cost of more quantum resources.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
