Advances in device-independent quantum key distribution

Víctor Zapatero; Tim van Leent; Rotem Arnon-Friedman; Wen Zhao Liu; Qiang Zhang; Harald Weinfurter; Marcos Curty

doi:10.1038/s41534-023-00684-x

Advances in device-independent quantum key distribution

Víctor Zapatero, Tim van Leent, Rotem Arnon-Friedman, Wen Zhao Liu, Qiang Zhang, Harald Weinfurter, Marcos Curty^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Physics of Complex Systems

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

83 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Device-independent quantum key distribution (DI-QKD) provides the gold standard for secure key exchange. Not only does it allow for information-theoretic security based on quantum mechanics, but it also relaxes the need to physically model the devices, thereby fundamentally ruling out many quantum hacking threats to which non-DI QKD systems are vulnerable. In practice though, DI-QKD is very challenging. It relies on the loophole-free violation of a Bell inequality, a task that requires high quality entanglement to be distributed between distant parties and close to perfect quantum measurements, which is hardly achievable with current technology. Notwithstanding, recent theoretical and experimental efforts have led to proof-of-principle DI-QKD implementations. In this article, we review the state-of-the-art of DI-QKD by highlighting its main theoretical and experimental achievements, discussing recent proof-of-principle demonstrations, and emphasizing the existing challenges in the field.

Original language	English
Article number	10
Journal	npj Quantum Information
Volume	9
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-023-00684-x
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Funding

V.Z. and M.C. acknowledge support from the Galician Regional Government (consolidation of Research Units: AtlantTIC), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through Grant No. PID2020-118178RB-C21, Cisco Systems Inc., and MICINN —with funding from the European Union NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17.I1)— and the Galician Regional Government—with own funding—through the “Planes Complementarios de I+D+I con las Comunidades Autonomous” in Quantum Communication. R.A.F. was generously supported by the Peter and Patricia Gruber Award, the Daniel E. Koshland Career Development Chair and by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), and the Directorate for Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), grant No. 3426/21. T.vL. and H.W. acknowledge funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)) within the project QR.X (Contract No. 16KISQ002) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy - EXC-2111 - 390814868. W.Z.L. and Q.Z. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. T2125010) and the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (No. 2019SHZDZX01). Author contributions - All authors discussed the work together and decided the structure and contents of the paper. V.Z., T.vL., R.A.F., and W.Z.L. wrote the manuscript, with feedback from the rest. All authors critically read it and revised it. M.C. supervised the project.

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Computer Science (miscellaneous)
Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Computer Networks and Communications
Computational Theory and Mathematics

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10.1038/s41534-023-00684-xLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Device-independent quantum key distribution (DI-QKD) provides the gold standard for secure key exchange. Not only does it allow for information-theoretic security based on quantum mechanics, but it also relaxes the need to physically model the devices, thereby fundamentally ruling out many quantum hacking threats to which non-DI QKD systems are vulnerable. In practice though, DI-QKD is very challenging. It relies on the loophole-free violation of a Bell inequality, a task that requires high quality entanglement to be distributed between distant parties and close to perfect quantum measurements, which is hardly achievable with current technology. Notwithstanding, recent theoretical and experimental efforts have led to proof-of-principle DI-QKD implementations. In this article, we review the state-of-the-art of DI-QKD by highlighting its main theoretical and experimental achievements, discussing recent proof-of-principle demonstrations, and emphasizing the existing challenges in the field. ",

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AU - Curty, Marcos

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Advances in device-independent quantum key distribution

Abstract

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