TY - JOUR
T1 - Terahertz Quantum Cryptography
AU - Ottaviani, Carlo
AU - Woolley, Matthew J.
AU - Erementchouk, Misha
AU - Federici, John F.
AU - Mazumder, Pinaki
AU - Pirandola, Stefano
AU - Weedbrook, Christian
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received June 30, 2019; revised December 15, 2019; accepted January 6, 2020. Date of publication January 30, 2020; date of current version April 3, 2020. This work was supported in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) via the ‘UK Quantum Communications Hub’ under Grant EP/M013472/1, and in part by the European Commission under Project Continuous Variable Quantum Communications (CiViQ) under Grant 820466. The work of Pinaki Mazumder was supported by the USA Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under Grant FA9550-18-1-0315. (Corresponding authors: Carlo Ottaviani; Stefano Pirandola.) Carlo Ottaviani is with the Department of Computer Science and Centre for Quantum Technologies, University of York, York YO10 5GH, U.K. (e-mail: carlo.ottaviani@york.ac.uk).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 IEEE.
PY - 2020/3
Y1 - 2020/3
N2 - A well-known empirical rule for the demand of wireless communication systems is that of Edholm's law of bandwidth. It states that the demand for bandwidth in wireless short-range communications doubles every 18 months. With the growing demand for bandwidth and the decreasing cell size of wireless systems, terahertz (THz) communication systems are expected to become increasingly important in modern day applications. With this expectation comes the need for protecting users' privacy and security in the best way possible. With that in mind, we show that quantum key distribution can operate in the THz regime and we derive the relevant secret key rates against realistic collective attacks. In the extended THz range (from 0.1 to 50 THz), we find that below 1 THz, the main detrimental factor is thermal noise, while at higher frequencies it is atmospheric absorption. Our results show that high-rate THz quantum cryptography is possible over distances varying from a few meters using direct reconciliation, to about 220m via reverse reconciliation. We also give a specific example of the physical hardware and architecture that could be used to realize our THz quantum key distribution scheme.
AB - A well-known empirical rule for the demand of wireless communication systems is that of Edholm's law of bandwidth. It states that the demand for bandwidth in wireless short-range communications doubles every 18 months. With the growing demand for bandwidth and the decreasing cell size of wireless systems, terahertz (THz) communication systems are expected to become increasingly important in modern day applications. With this expectation comes the need for protecting users' privacy and security in the best way possible. With that in mind, we show that quantum key distribution can operate in the THz regime and we derive the relevant secret key rates against realistic collective attacks. In the extended THz range (from 0.1 to 50 THz), we find that below 1 THz, the main detrimental factor is thermal noise, while at higher frequencies it is atmospheric absorption. Our results show that high-rate THz quantum cryptography is possible over distances varying from a few meters using direct reconciliation, to about 220m via reverse reconciliation. We also give a specific example of the physical hardware and architecture that could be used to realize our THz quantum key distribution scheme.
KW - Quantum key distribution (QKD)
KW - cryptography
KW - quantum communication
KW - terahertz (THz) radiation
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U2 - 10.1109/JSAC.2020.2968973
DO - 10.1109/JSAC.2020.2968973
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078813863
SN - 0733-8716
VL - 38
SP - 483
EP - 495
JO - IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
JF - IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
IS - 3
M1 - 8976167
ER -