Round-Robin Differential Phase Shift with Heralded Single-Photon Source

Round-robin differential phase shift （RRDPS） is a novel quantum key distribution protocol which can bound information leakage without monitoring signal disturbance. In this work, to decrease the effect of the vacuum component in a weak coherent pulses source, we employ a practical decoy-state scheme with heralded singlephoton source for the RRDPS protocol and analyze the performance of this method. In this scheme, only two decoy states are needed and the yields of single-photon state and multi-photon states, as well as the bit error rates of each photon states, can be estimated. The final key rate of this scheme is bounded and simulated over transmission distance. The results show that the two-decoy-state method with heralded single-photon source performs better than the two-decoy-state method with weak coherent pulses.

Application of a Discrete Phase-Randomized Coherent State Source in Round-Robin Differential Phase-Shift Quantum Key Distribution

Recently, a novel kind of quantum key distribution called the round-robin differential phase-shift （RRDPS） protocol was proposed, which bounds the amount of leakage without monitoring signal disturbance. The protocol can be implemented by a weak coherent source. The security of this protocol with a simply characterized source has been proved. The application of a common phase shift can improve the secret key rate of the protocol. In practice, the randomized phase is discrete and the secret key rate is deviated from the continuous case. In this study, we analyze security of the RRDPS protocol with discrete-phase-randomized coherent state source and bound the secret key rate. We fix the length of each packet at 32 and 64, then simulate the secret key rates of the RRDPS protocol with discrete-phase randomization and continuous-phase randomization. Our simulation results show that the performance of the discrete-phase randomization case is close to the continuous counterpart with only a small number of discrete phases. The research is practically valuable for experimental implementation.

Measurment of gas-liquid two-phase slug flow with a Venturi meter based on blind source separation

We propose a novel flow measurement method for gas–liquid two-phase slug flow by using the blind source separation technique. The flow measurement model is established based on the fluctuation characteristics of differential pressure(DP) signals measured from a Venturi meter. It is demonstrated that DP signals of two-phase flow are a linear mixture of DP signals of single phase fluids. The measurement model is a combination of throttle relationship and blind source separation model. In addition, we estimate the mixture matrix using the independent component analysis(ICA) technique. The mixture matrix could be described using the variances of two DP signals acquired from two Venturi meters. The validity of the proposed model was tested in the gas–liquid twophase flow loop facility. Experimental results showed that for most slug flow the relative error is within 10%.We also find that the mixture matrix is beneficial to investigate the flow mechanism of gas–liquid two-phase flow.