Improved decoy-state quantum key distribution with uncharacterized heralded single-photon sources

Abstract

Encoding system plays a significant role in quantum key distribution (QKD). However, the security and performance of QKD systems can be compromised by encoding misalignment due to the inevitable defects in realistic devices. To alleviate the influence of misalignments, a method exploiting statistics from mismatched basis is proposed to enable uncharacterized sources to generate secure keys in QKD. In this work, we propose a scheme on four-intensity decoy-state quantum key distribution with uncharacterized heralded single-photon sources. It only requires the source states are prepared in a two-dimensional Hilbert space, and can thus reduce the complexity of practical realizations. Moreover, we carry out corresponding numerical simulations and demonstrate that our present four-intensity decoy-state scheme can achieve a much higher key rate compared than a three-intensity decoy-state method, and meantime it can obtain a longer transmission distance compared than the one using weak coherent sources.