Passive decoy-state quantum key distribution for the weak coherent photon source with finite-length key**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11304397).

Abstract

Passive decoy-state quantum key distribution systems, proven to be more desirable than active ones in some scenarios, also have the problem of device imperfections like finite-length keys. In this paper, based on the WCP source which can be used for the passive decoy-state method, we obtain the expressions of single-photon error rates, single-photon counts, and phase error rates. According to the information of smooth min-entropy, we calculate the key generation rate under the condition of finite-length key. Key generation rates with different numbers of pulses are compared by numerical simulations. From the results, it can be seen that the passive decoy-state method can have good results if the total number of pulses reaches 1010. We also simulate the passive decoy-state method with different probabilities of choosing a pulse for parameter estimation when the number of pulses is fixed.