Alternative schemes for measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution

Abstract

Practical schemes for measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution using phase and path or time encoding are presented. In addition to immunity to existing loopholes in detection systems, our setup employs simple encoding and decoding modules without relying on polarization maintenance or optical switches. Moreover, by employing a modified sifting technique to handle the dead-time limitations in single-photon detectors, our scheme can be run with only two single-photon detectors. With a phase-post-selection technique, a decoy-state variant of our scheme is also proposed, whose key generation rate scales linearly with the channel transmittance. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.062319 Received 17 July 2012Published 19 December 2012©2012 American Physical Society