Go Kato

Loss-tolerant quantum cryptography with imperfect sources

In principle, quantum key distribution (QKD) offers unconditional security based on the laws of physics. In practice, flaws in the state preparation undermine the security of QKD systems, as standard theoretical approaches to deal with state preparation flaws are not loss-tolerant. An eavesdropper can enhance and exploit such imperfections through quantum channel loss, thus dramatically lowering the key generation rate. Crucially, the security analyses of most existing QKD experiments are rather unrealistic as they typically neglect this effect. Here, we propose a novel and general approach that makes QKD loss-tolerant to state preparation flaws. Importantly, it suggests that the state preparation process in QKD can be significantly less precise than initially thought. Our method can widely apply to other quantum cryptographic protocols.

Aggregating quantum repeaters for the quantum internet

The quantum internet holds promise for accomplishing quantum teleportation and unconditionally secure communication freely between arbitrary clients all over the globe, as well as the simulation of quantum many-body systems. For such a quantum internet protocol, a general fundamental upper bound on the obtainable entanglement or secret key has been derived [K. Azuma, A. Mizutani, and H.-K. Lo, Nat. Commun. 7, 13523 (2016)]. Here we consider its converse problem. In particular, we present a universal protocol constructible from any given quantum network, which is based on running quantum repeater schemes in parallel over the network. For arbitrary lossy optical channel networks, our protocol has no scaling gap with the upper bound, even based on existing quantum repeater schemes. In an asymptotic limit, our protocol works as an optimal entanglement or secret-key distribution over any quantum network composed of practical channels such as erasure channels, dephasing channels, bosonic quantum amplifier channels, and lossy optical channels.

Information-theoretic security proof of differential-phase-shift quantum key distribution protocol based on complementarity

We show the information-theoretic security proof of the differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol based on the complementarity approach [arXiv:0704.3661 (2007)]. Our security proof provides a slightly better key generation rate compared to the one derived in the previous security proof in [arXiv:1208.1995 (2012)] that is based on the Shor-Preskill approach [Phys. Rev. Lett.

Secrecy and robustness for active attack in secure network coding

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Single-Shot Secure Quantum Network Coding for General Multiple Unicast Network with Free Public Communication

, 441 (2000)]. This improvement is obtained because the complementarity approach can employ more detailed information on Alices sending state in estimating the leaked information to an eavesdropper. Moreover, we remove the necessity of the numerical calculation that was needed in the previous analysis to estimate the leaked information. This leads to an advantage that our security proof enables us to evaluate the security of the DPS protocol with any block size. This paper highlights one of the fundamental differences between the Shor-Preskill and the complementarity approaches.

Quantum circuit for the proof of the security of quantum key distribution without encryption of error syndrome and noisy processing

In the network coding, we discuss the effect by sequential error injection to information leakage. We show that there is no improvement when the network is composed of linear operations. However, when the network contains non-linear operations, we find a counterexample to improve Eves obtained information. Further, we discuss the asymptotic rate in the linear network under the secrecy and robustness conditions.

Differential-phase-shift quantum-key-distribution protocol with a small number of random delays

Based on a secure classical network code, we propose a general method for constructing a secure quantum network code in the multiple unicast setting under restricted eavesdropper’s power. This protocol certainly transmits quantum states when there is no attack. We also show the secrecy with shared randomness as additional resource from the secrecy and the recoverability of the corresponding secure classical network code. Our protocol does not require verification process, which ensures single-shot security.

Security of six-state quantum key distribution protocol with threshold detectors

One of the simplest security proofs of quantum key distribution is based on the so-called complementarity scenario, which involves the complementarity control of an actual protocol and a virtual protocol [M. Koashi, e-print arXiv:0704.3661 (2007)]. The existing virtual protocol has a limitation in classical postprocessing, i.e., the syndrome for the error-correction step has to be encrypted. In this paper, we remove this limitation by constructing a quantum circuit for the virtual protocol. Moreover, our circuit with a shield system gives an intuitive proof of why adding noise to the sifted key increases the bit error rate threshold in the general case in which one of the parties does not possess a qubit. Thus, our circuit bridges the simple proof and the use of wider classes of classical postprocessing.

Probing an untouchable environment for its identification and control

The differential-phase-shift (DPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol was proposed aiming at simple implementation, but it can tolerate only a small disturbance in a quantum channel. The round-robin DPS (RRDPS) protocol could be a good solution for this problem, which in fact can tolerate even up to

Grover-algorithm-like operator using only single-qubit gates

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