In this work, we introduce a high-dimensional polarization-phase (PoP)-based quantum key distribution protocol, briefly named PoP[Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the dimension of a hybrid quantum state including polarization and phase degrees of freedom of the same photon, and [Formula: see text] is the number of mutually unbiased bases. We present a detailed description of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol as a special case, and evaluate its security against various individual and coherent eavesdropping strategies, and in each case, we compare it with the BB84 and the two-dimensional (TD)-PoP protocols. In all the strategies, the error threshold and the effective transmission rate of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol are far greater than the other two protocols. Unlike most high-dimensional protocols, the simplicity of producing and detecting the qudits and the use of conventional components (such as traditional single-photon sources and quantum channels) are among the features of the PoP[Formula: see text] protocol.
High-capacity quantum key distribution via hyperentangled degrees of freedom
