Security of BB84 with weak randomness and imperfect qubit encoding

• Published in: Quantum information processing 2018-03, Vol.17 (3), p.1-13, Article 55
• Main Authors: Zhao, Liang-Yuan, Yin, Zhen-Qiang, Li, Hong-Wei, Chen, Wei, Fang, Xi, Han, Zheng-Fu, Huang, Wei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Coding; Data Structures and Information Theory; Mathematical Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Computing; Quantum cryptography; Quantum Information Technology; Quantum Physics; Qubits (quantum computing); Random numbers; Randomness; Spintronics
• ISSN: 1570-0755; 1573-1332
• DOI: 10.1007/s11128-018-1830-0

The main threats for the well-known Bennett–Brassard 1984 (BB84) practical quantum key distribution (QKD) systems are that its encoding is inaccurate and measurement device may be vulnerable to particular attacks. Thus, a general physical model or security proof to tackle these loopholes simultaneously and quantitatively is highly desired. Here we give a framework on the security of BB84 when imperfect qubit encoding and vulnerability of measurement device are both considered. In our analysis, the potential attacks to measurement device are generalized by the recently proposed weak randomness model which assumes the input random numbers are partially biased depending on a hidden variable planted by an eavesdropper. And the inevitable encoding inaccuracy is also introduced here. From a fundamental view, our work reveals the potential information leakage due to encoding inaccuracy and weak randomness input. For applications, our result can be viewed as a useful tool to quantitatively evaluate the security of a practical QKD system.