A two-step quantum secure direct communication protocol with hyperentanglement

We propose a two-step quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol with hyperentanglement in both the spatial-mode and the polarization degrees of freedom of photon pairs which can in principle be produced with a beta barium borate crystal. The secret message can be encoded on the photon pairs with unitary operations in these two degrees of freedom independently. This QSDC protocol has a higher capacity than the original two-step QSDC protocol as each photon pair can carry 4 bits of information. Compared with the QSDC protocol based on hyperdense coding, this QSDC protocol has the immunity to Trojan horse attack strategies with the process for determining the number of the photons in each quantum signal as it is a one-way quantum communication protocol.

Fault tolerant quantum secure direct communication with quantum encryption against collective noise

We present two novel quantum secure direct communication（QSDC） protocols over different collective-noise channels.Different from the previous QSDC schemes over collective-noise channels,which are all source-encrypting protocols,our two protocols are based on channel-encryption.In both schemes,two authorized users first share a sequence of EPR pairs as their reusable quantum key.Then they use their quantum key to encrypt and decrypt the secret message carried by the decoherence-free states over the collective-noise channel.In theory,the intrinsic efficiencies of both protocols are high since there is no need to consume any entangled states including both the quantum key and the information carriers except the ones used for eavesdropping checks.For checking eavesdropping,the two parties only need to perform two-particle measurements on the decoy states during each round.Finally,we make a security analysis of our two protocols and demonstrate that they are secure.

Economical quantum secure direct communication network with single photons

In this paper a scheme for quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） network is proposed with a sequence of polarized single photons. The single photons are prepared originally in the same state （0） by the servers on the network, which will reduce the difficulty for the legitimate users to check eavesdropping largely. The users code the information on the single photons with two unitary operations which do not change their measuring bases. Some decoy photons, which are produced by operating the sample photons with a Hadamard, are used for preventing a potentially dishonest server from eavesdropping the quantum lines freely. This scheme is an economical one as it is the easiest way for QSDC network communication securely.

An efficient quantum secure direct communication scheme with authentication

In this paper an efficient quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） scheme with authentication is presented, which is based on quantum entanglement and polarized single photons. The present protocol uses Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen （EPR） pairs and polarized single photons in batches. A particle of the EPR pairs is retained in the sender＇s station, and the other is transmitted forth and back between the sender and the receiver, similar to the‘ping-pong＇ QSDC protocol. According to the shared information beforehand, these two kinds of quantum states are mixed and then transmitted via a quantum channel. The EPR pairs are used to transmit secret messages and the polarized single photons used for authentication and eavesdropping check. Consequently, because of the dual contributions of the polarized single photons, no classical information is needed. The intrinsic efficiency and total efficiency are both 1 in this scheme as almost all of the instances are useful and each EPR pair can be used to carry two bits of information.

Analysis and Improvement of an Efficient Controlled Quantum Secure Direct Communication and Authentication Protocol

The controlled quantum secure direct communication(CQSDC)with authentication protocol based on four particle cluster states via quantum one-time pad and local unitary operations is cryptanalyzed.It is found that there are some serious security issues in this protocol.An eavesdropper(Eve)can eavesdrop on some information of the identity strings of the receiver and the controller without being detected by the selective-CNOT-operation(SCNO)attack.By the same attack,Eve can also steal some information of the secret message that the sender transmits.In addition,the receiver can take the same kind of attack to eavesdrop on some information of the secret message out of the control of the controller.This means that the requirements of CQSDC are not satisfied.At last,we improve the original CQSDC protocol to a secure one.

Faithful quantum secure direct communication protocol against collective noise

An improved quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol is proposed in this paper. Blocks of entangled photon pairs are transmitted in two steps in which secret messages are transmitted directly. The single logical qubits and unitary operations under decoherence free subspaces are presented and the generalized Bell states are constructed which are immune to the collective noise. Two steps of qubit transmission are used in this protocol to guarantee the security of communication. The security of the protocol against various attacks are discussed.

Robust quantum secure direct communication and authentication protocol against decoherence noise based on six-qubit DF state

By using six-qubit decoherence-free （DF） states as quantum carriers and decoy states, a robust quantum secure direct communication and authentication （QSDCA） protocol against decoherence noise is proposed. Four six-qubit DF states are used in the process of secret transmission, however only the ｜0＇〉 state is prepared. The other three six-qubit DF states can be obtained by permuting the outputs of the setup for ｜0＇〉. By using the ｜0＇〉 state as the decoy state, the detection rate and the qubit error rate reach 81.3%, and they will not change with the noise level. The stability and security are much higher than those of the ping-pong protocol both in an ideal scenario and a decoherence noise scenario. Even if the eavesdropper measures several qubits, exploiting the coherent relationship between these qubits, she can gain one bit of secret information with probability 0.042.

Measurement-device-independent one-step quantum secure direct communication

The one-step quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)(Sci.Bull.67,367(2022))can effectively simplify QSDC’s operation and reduce message loss.For enhancing its security under practical experimental condition,we propose two measurement-device-independent(MDI)one-step QSDC protocols,which can resist all possible attacks from imperfect measurement devices.In both protocols,the communication parties prepare identical polarization-spatial-mode two-photon hyperentangled states and construct the hyperentanglement channel by hyperentanglement swapping.The first MDI one-step QSDC protocol adopts the nonlinear-optical complete hyperentanglement Bell state measurement(HBSM)to construct the hyperentanglement channel,while the second protocol adopts the linear-optical partial HBSM.Then,the parties encode the photons in the polarization degree of freedom and send them to the third party for the hyperentanglementassisted complete polarization Bell state measurement.Both protocols are unconditionally secure in theory.The simulation results show the MDI one-step QSDC protocol with complete HBSM attains the maximal communication distance of about354 km.Our MDI one-step QSDC protocols may have potential applications in the future quantum secure communication field.

Two-step quantum secure direct communication scheme with frequency coding

Quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） is an important branch of quantum cryptography. It can transmit secret information directly without establishing a key first, unlike quantum key distribution which requires this precursory event. Here we propose a QSDC scheme by applying the frequency coding technique to the two-step QSDC protocol, which enables the two-step QSDC protocol to work in a noisy environment. We have numerically simulated the performance of the protocol in a noisy channel, and the results show that the scheme is indeed robust against channel noise and loss. We also give an estimate of the channel noise upper bound.

Quantum secure direct communication protocol with blind polarization bases and particles＇ transmitting order

This paper presents a modified secure direct communication protocol by using the blind polarization bases and particles＇ random transmitting order. In our protocol, a sender （Alice） encodes secret messages by rotating a random polarization angle of particle and then the receiver （Bob） sends back these particles as a random sequence. This ensures the security of communication.

Quantum secure direct communication via partially entangled states

We present in this paper a quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol by using partially entangled states. In the scheme a third party （Trent） is introduced to authenticate the participants. After authentication, Alice can directly, deterministically and successfully send a secret message to Bob. The security of the scheme is also discussed and confirmed.

Quantum secure direct communication network with hyperentanglement

We propose a quantum secure direct communication protocol with entanglement swapping and hyperentanglement. Any two users, Alice and Bob, can communicate with each other in a quantum network, even though there is no direct quantum channel between them. The trust center, Trent, who provides a quantum channel to link them by performing entanglement swapping, cannot eavesdrop on their communication. This protocol provides a high channel capacity because it uses hyperentanglement, which can be generated using a beta barium borate crystal.

Quantum Secure Direct Communication Protocol with Mutual Authentication Based on Single Photons and Bell States

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)can transmit secret messages directly from one user to another without first establishing a shared secret key,which is different from quantum key distribution.In this paper,we propose a novel quantum secure direct communication protocol based on signal photons and Bell states.Before the execution of the proposed protocol,two participants Alice and Bob exchange their corresponding identity IDA and IDB through quantum key distribution and keep them secret,respectively.Then the message sender,Alice,encodes each secret message bit into two single photons(|01>or|10>)or a Bell state(1|φ^(+)>=1/√2(|0>|-|1>1>)),and composes an ordered secret message sequence.To insure the security of communication,Alice also prepares the decoy photons and inserts them into secret message sequence on the basis of the values of IDA and IDB.By the secret identity IDA and IDB,both sides of the communication can check eavesdropping and identify each other.The proposed protocol not only completes secure direct communication,but also realizes the mutual authentication.The security analysis of the proposed protocol is presented in the paper.The analysis results show that this protocol is secure against some common attacks,and no secret message leaks even if the messages are broken.Compared with the two-way QSDC protocols,the presented protocol is a one-way quantum communication protocol which has the immunity to Trojan horse attack.Furthermore,our proposed protocol can be realized without quantum memory.

A quantum secure direct communication scheme based on intermediate-basis

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)is a method of communication that transmits secret information directly through a quantum channel.This paper proposes a two-step QSDC scheme based on intermediate-basis,in which the intermediate-basis Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen(EPR)pairs can assist to detect channel security and help encode information.Specifically,the intermediate-basis EPR pairs reduce the probability of Eve choosing the correct measurement basis in the first step,enhancing the security of the system.Moreover,they encode information together with information EPR pairs to improve the transmission efficiency in the second step.We consider the security of the protocol under coherent attack when Eve takes different dimensions of the auxiliary system.The simulation results show that intermediate-basis EPR pairs can lower the upper limit of the amount of information that Eve can steal in both attack scenarios.Therefore,the proposed protocol can ensure that the legitimate parties get more confidential information and improve the transmission efficiency.

Experimental long-distance quantum secure direct communication

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC) is an important quantum communication branch, which realizes the secure information transmission directly without encryption and decryption processes.Recently, two table-top experiments have demonstrated the principle of QSDC. Here, we report the first long-distance QSDC experiment, including the security test, information encoding, fiber transmission and decoding. After the fiber transmission of 0.5 km, quantum state fidelities of the two polarization entangled Bell states are 91% and 88%, respectively, which are used for information coding. We theoretically analyze the performance of the QSDC system based on current optical communication technologies,showing that QSDC over fiber links of several tens kilometers could be expected. It demonstrates the potential of long-distance QSDC and supports its future applications on quantum communication networks.

Experimental quantum secure direct communication with single photons

Quantum secure direct communication is an important mode of quantum communication in which secret messages are securely communicated directly over a quantum channel.Quantum secure direct communication is also a basic cryptographic primitive for constructing other quantum communication tasks,such as quantum authentication and quantum dialog.Here,we report the first experimental demonstration of quantum secure direct communication based on the DL04 protocol and equipped with single-photon frequency coding that explicitly demonstrated block transmission.In our experiment,we provided 16 different frequency channels,equivalent to a nibble of four-bit binary numbers for direct information transmission.The experiment firmly demonstrated the feasibility of quantum secure direct communication in the presence of noise and loss.

Quantum secure direct communication with cluster states

A quantum secure direct communication protocol with cluster states is proposed.Compared with the deterministic secure quantum communication protocol with the cluster state proposed by Yuan and Song(Int.J.Quant.Inform.,2009,7:689),this protocol can achieve higher intrinsic efficiency by using two-step transmission.The implementation of this protocol is also discussed.

Generic security analysis framework for quantum secure direct communication

Quantum secure direct communication provides a direct means of conveying secret information via quantum states among legitimate users.The past two decades have witnessed its great strides both theoretically and experimentally.However,the security analysis of it still stays in its infant.Some practical problems in this field to be solved urgently,such as detector efficiency mismatch,side-channel effect and source imperfection,are propelling the birth of a more impeccable solution.In this paper,we establish a new framework of the security analysis driven by numerics where all the practical problems may be taken into account naturally.We apply this framework to several variations of the DL04 protocol considering real-world experimental conditions.Also,we propose two optimizing methods to process the numerical part of the framework so as to meet different requirements in practice.With these properties considered,we predict the robust framework would open up a broad avenue of the development in the field.

One-step device-independent quantum secure direct communication

Device-independent quantum secure direct communication(DI-QSDC)can relax the security assumptions about the devices’internal working,and effectively enhance QSDC’s security.In this paper,we put forward the first hyperentanglement-based one-step DI-QSDC protocol.In this protocol,the communication parties adopt the nonlocal hyperentanglement-assisted complete Bell state analysis,which enables the photons to transmit in the quantum channel for only one round.The one-step DI-QSDC can directly transmit 2 bits of messages by a hyperentangled photon pair,and is unconditionally secure in theory.Compared with the original DI-QSDC protocol(Sci.Bull.65,12(2020)),the one-step DI-QSDC protocol can simplify the experiment and reduce the message loss.In particular,with the help of the hyperentanglement heralded amplification and the hyperentanglement purification,the message loss and the message error caused by the channel noise can be completely eliminated,and the communication distance can be largely extended.By using the photon source with a repetition rate of 10 GHz,the one-step DI-QSDC’s secret message capacity under 50 km communication distance achieves about 7 bit/s with the initial fidelity in each degree of freedom of 0.8.Combined with the quantum repeater,it is possible for researchers to realize the one-step DI-QSDC with an arbitrarily long distance.

Quantum secure direct communication with entanglement source and single-photon measurement

Quantum secure direct communication(QSDC)transmits information directly over a quantum channel.In addition to security in transmission,it avoids loopholes of key loss and prevents the eavesdropper from getting ciphertext.In this article,we propose a QSDC protocol using entangled photon pairs.This protocol differs from existing entanglement-based QSDC protocols because it does not perform Bell-state measurement,and one photon of the entangled pair is measured after the entanglement distribution.It has the advantage of high signal-to-noise ratio due to the heralding function of entanglement pairs,and it also has the relative ease in performing single-photon measurement.The protocol can use a practical entanglement source from spontaneous parametric down-conversion(SPDC);Gottesman-Lo-Lu¨tkenhaus-Preskill theory and the decoy state method give a better estimate of the error rate.Security analysis is completed with Wyner’s wiretap channel theory,and the lower bound of the secrecy capacity is estimated.Numerical simulations were carried out to study the performance of the protocol.These simulations demonstrated that the protocol with a practical SPDC entanglement source performed well and was close to the case with an ideal entanglement source.