Fundamental finite key limits for information reconciliation in quantum key distribution

Conference paper (2014)

Authors

Marco Tomamichel National University of Singapore
Jesus Martinez-Mateo Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Christoph Pacher AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
D. Elkouss Coronas Universidad Complutense de Madrid
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Published Date

2014

Language

English

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Abstract

The security of quantum key distribution protocols is guaranteed by the laws of quantum mechanics. However, a precise analysis of the security properties requires tools from both classical cryptography and information theory. Here, we employ recent results in non-asymptotic classical information theory to show that information reconciliation imposes fundamental limitations on the amount of secret key that can be extracted in the finite key regime. In particular, we find that an often used approximation for the information leakage during one-way information reconciliation is flawed and we propose an improved estimate.