QKD Based on Symmetric Entangled Bernstein-Vazirani

This paper introduces a novel entanglement-based QKD protocol, that makes use of a modified symmetric version of the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm, in order to achieve secure and efficient key distribution. Two variants of the protocol, one fully symmetric and one semi-symmetric, are presented. In both cases, the spatially separated Alice and Bob share multiple EPR pairs, each one qubit of the pair. The fully symmetric version allows both parties to input their tentative secret key from their respective location and acquire in the end a totally new and original key, an idea which was inspired by the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. In the semi-symmetric version, Alice sends her chosen secret key to Bob (or vice versa). The performance of both protocols against an eavesdroppers attack is analyzed. Finally, in order to illustrate the operation of the protocols in practice, two small scale but detailed examples are given.

Multilevel polarization for quantum Channels

Recently, a purely quantum version of polar codes has been proposed in~\cite{DGMS19} based on a quantum channel combining and splitting procedure, where a randomly chosen two-qubit Clifford unitary acts as a channel combining operation. Here, we consider the quantum polar code construction using the same channel combining and splitting procedure as in~\cite{DGMS19}, but with a fixed two-qubit Clifford unitary. For the family of Pauli channels, we show that polarization happens in multi-levels, where synthesized quantum virtual channels tend to become completely noisy, half-noisy, or noiseless. Further, we present a quantum polar code exploiting the multilevel nature of polarization, and provide an efficient decoding for this code. We show that half-noisy channels can be frozen by fixing their inputs in either the amplitude or the phase basis, which allows reducing the number of preshared EPR pairs compared to the construction in~\cite{DGMS19}. We provide an upper bound on the number of preshared EPR pairs, which is an equality in the case of the quantum erasure channel. To improve the speed of polarization, we propose an alternative construction, which again polarizes in multi-levels, and the previous upper bound on the number of preshared EPR pairs also holds. For a quantum erasure channel, we confirm by numerical analysis that the multilevel polarization happens relatively faster for the alternative construction.

Three-party quantum secret sharing based on phase shift operation

An efficient three-party quantum secret sharing scheme is proposed. The dealer uses the phase shift operation to encode the secret information into some EPR pairs. The members use the phase shift operation to decode the EPR pairs, and measure the EPR pairs to reconstruct the secret. Our scheme does not need the BB84 protocol or the decoy particles to protect the transmitted particles, and can use the phase shift operation to prevent the attacker from stealing secret information from the transmitted particles. So all the particles can be used to bring the secret information, and the utilization efficiency of the particles of 100% can be achieved. With the prevent technology, our scheme is more practical than the existing schemes.