Abstract
Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables two remote users to share a string of key bits with information-theoretical security. Parameter optimization is a crucial step in achieving optimal performance in practical QKD systems. In general, such optimization is implemented using a local search algorithm (LSA). However, LSAs inevitably fail to find out the optimal values when the searched key rate function is nonconvex or has a discontinuity of first-order derivatives and a narrow parameter search space. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm-based method to overcome the limitations of LSAs for QKD parameter optimization. We tested the proposed method with various types of common QKD protocols and found that it has very high parameter optimization performance for QKD with a time consumption comparable to that using a standard LSA. We expect our method to be a valuable optimization tool for quantum information processing tasks.
Highlights
Quantum key distribution (QKD) [1, 2], which is guaranteed by the principles of quantum mechanics, enables two remote users to share a string of key bits with information-theoretical security
It can be seen that our proposed method achieves very similar levels of key rate compared to the local search algorithm (LSA) for the symmetrical MDI-QKD and RFI-MDI-QKD protocols, as shown in Figures 5(c) and 5(d)
We tested our method with four common QKD protocols and demonstrated that it outperforms an LSA and can accurately and efficiently find optima
Summary
Quantum key distribution (QKD) [1, 2], which is guaranteed by the principles of quantum mechanics, enables two remote users to share a string of key bits with information-theoretical security. Decoy-state QKD has been demonstrated in optical fiber [7,8,9] and free space [10, 11]. Various field-test QKD networks [12,13,14,15,16], assembled with decoy-state QKD systems, have been reported worldwide. Combined with the idea of measurement-device-independent (MDI)-QKD [8, 17,18,19], which removes all detector side-channel attacks, decoy-state QKD systems have successfully overcome the repeaterless secret key capacity [20,21,22,23,24] and become more suitable for practical applications [25,26,27,28,29]
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