Experimental demonstration of kilometer-range quantum digital signatures

Donaldson, Ross J.; Collins, Robert J.; Kleczkowska, Klaudia; Amiri, Ryan; Wallden, Petros; Dunjko, Vedran; Jeffers, John; Andersson, Erika; Buller, Gerald S.

doi:10.1103/physreva.93.012329

Cited by 75 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, a great range of quantum communication protocols beyond QKD have been studied in recent years 161 and their development has directly benefited from research in QKD. These include, for instance, quantum bit commitment, [162][163][164] quantum secret sharing, [165][166][167] quantum coin flipping, 168,169 quantum fingerprinting, 170,171 quantum digital signatures, 172,173 blind quantum computing 174,175 and position-based quantum cryptography. [176][177][178] It is known that some of those protocols, such as quantum bit commitment and position-based quantum cryptography, cannot be perfectly achieved with unconditional security.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical challenges in quantum key distribution

Diamanti¹,

Lo²,

Qi³

et al. 2016

npj Quantum Inf

645

468

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises unconditional security in data communication and is currently being deployed in commercial applications. Nonetheless, before QKD can be widely adopted, it faces a number of important challenges such as secret key rate, distance, size, cost and practical security. Here, we survey those key challenges and the approaches that are currently being taken to address them. For thousands of years, human beings have been using codes to keep secrets. With the rise of the Internet and recent trends to the Internet of Things, our sensitive personal financial and health data as well as commercial and national secrets are routinely being transmitted through the Internet. In this context, communication security is of utmost importance. In conventional symmetric cryptographic algorithms, communication security relies solely on the secrecy of an encryption key. If two users, Alice and Bob, share a long random string of secret bits-the key-then they can achieve unconditional security by encrypting their message using the standard one-time-pad encryption scheme. The central question then is: how do Alice and Bob share a secure key in the first place? This is called the key distribution problem. Unfortunately, all classical methods to distribute a secure key are fundamentally insecure because in classical physics there is nothing preventing an eavesdropper, Eve, from copying the key during its transit from Alice to Bob. On the other hand, standard asymmetric or public-key cryptography solves the key distribution problem by relying on computational assumptions such as the hardness of factoring. Therefore, such schemes do not provide information-theoretic security because they are vulnerable to future advances in hardware and algorithms, including the construction of a large-scale quantum computer.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical challenges in quantum key distribution

Diamanti¹,

Lo²,

Qi³

et al. 2016

npj Quantum Inf

645

468

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We demonstrate that our scheme is viable in a noisy environment using a free-space urban optical communication link. Finally, we show that, even when experimental imperfections are taken into account, this scheme outperforms a recent scheme that uses unambiguous state elimination measurements [23].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Refs. [5,6,23], however, recipients made "discrete" quantum measurements with error-free (unambiguous) results, at the expense of sometimes obtaining no result. Here we instead perform heterodyne measurements, which always give a result, at the expense of increased errors in the results.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous quantum signature schemes [5,6,23] have instead used unambiguous quantum measurements. We demonstrate that our scheme is viable in a noisy environment using a free-space urban optical communication link.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We use a discrete set of CV states, four phase-encoded coherent states jαi, jiαi, j − αi, j − iαi, and heterodyne CV measurements [24]. The same states were also used in previous QDS schemes [5,6,23] and are similar to those used in some types of CV QKDs [25,26]. In Refs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Free-Space Quantum Signatures Using Heterodyne Measurements

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Digital signatures guarantee the authorship of electronic communications. Currently used "classical" signature schemes rely on unproven computational assumptions for security, while quantum signatures rely only on the laws of quantum mechanics to sign a classical message. Previous quantum signature schemes have used unambiguous quantum measurements. Such measurements, however, sometimes give no result, reducing the efficiency of the protocol. Here, we instead use heterodyne detection, which always gives a result, although there is always some uncertainty. We experimentally demonstrate feasibility in a real environment by distributing signature states through a noisy 1.6 km free-space channel. Our results show that continuous-variable heterodyne detection improves the signature rate for this type of scheme and therefore represents an interesting direction in the search for practical quantum signature schemes. For transmission values ranging from 100% to 10%, but otherwise assuming an ideal implementation with no other imperfections, the signature length is shorter by a factor of 2 to 10. As compared with previous relevant experimental realizations, the signature length in this implementation is several orders of magnitude shorter. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.100503 Digital signatures [1] are ubiquitous in electronic communication, used in, for example, Email and digital banking. They guarantee the provenance, integrity, and transferability of messages. Currently used classical digital signature schemes, however, rely on unproven computational assumptions [2], and may become insecure especially if quantum computers can be built [3]. Quantum digital signatures (QDSs) [4][5][6][7][8][9][10], on the other hand, give information-theoretic security [7], loosely speaking based on the fact that nonorthogonal quantum states cannot be perfectly distinguished from each other.The first quantum signature schemes assumed tamperproof, "authenticated" quantum communication links. Intuitively, this could be accomplished using parameter estimation techniques similar to those used in quantum key distribution (QKD). How to achieve this was explicitly shown only recently [10,11]. In addition, recent quantum signature schemes [6,9], including our protocol, do not require long-term quantum memory. Importantly, this means that quantum signatures can be implemented with current technology, essentially similar to QKD setups. "Classical" signature schemes with information-theoretic security also exist [12][13][14], but rely on secret shared keys, which could be accomplished using QKD. Quantum signature schemes may have some advantages over schemes relying on shared keys generated using QKD. In particular, the quantum bit error threshold for a signature scheme is in practice less strict than for distilling a secret shared key [11]. In addition, the required postprocessing is less demanding. Exactly what signature schemes are the most efficient, however, remains an open problem.Note that most QDS protocols, including this one, use quantu...

show abstract

A New Efficient Quantum Digital Signature Scheme for Multi-bit Messages

Wang

2021

Information Security and Cryptology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experimental demonstration of kilometer-range quantum digital signatures

Cited by 75 publications

References 41 publications

Practical challenges in quantum key distribution

Practical challenges in quantum key distribution

Free-Space Quantum Signatures Using Heterodyne Measurements

A New Efficient Quantum Digital Signature Scheme for Multi-bit Messages

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About