Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a promising technique to share unconditionally secure keys between remote parties. As an essential part of a practical QKD system, reconciliation is responsible for correcting the errors due to the quantum channel noise by exchanging information through a public classical channel. In the present work, we propose a novel syndrome-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) reconciliation protocol to reduce the information leakage of reconciliation by fully utilizing the syndrome information that was previously wasted. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our protocol can evidently reduce the information leakage as well as the number of communication rounds.

Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) is proposed to achieve a remote key distribution with a maximum secure transmission distance up to over 500 km. Although the security of TF-QKD in its detection part is guaranteed, there are some remaining problems in the source part. The sending-or-not-sending (SNS) protocol is proposed to solve the security problem in the phase post-selection process; however, the light source is still assumed to be an ideal coherent state. This assumption is not satisfied in real-life QKD systems, leading to practical secure issues. In this paper, we discuss the condition that the photon number distribution (PND) of the source is unknown for the SNS protocol, demonstrate that the security analysis is still valid under a source with unknown PND, and show that with light source monitoring, the performance of the SNS protocol can remain almost unchanged.

The twin-field (TF) protocol is a key protocol in quantum key distribution (QKD) that enables remote key distribution, achieving a maximum secure transmission distance of over 500 km. However, the TF protocol still faces several security issues in real-world environments. To address the issue of untrusted sources, one effective solution is to introduce a light-source monitoring module into the system. Analysis shows that a solution based on untagged bits (UBs) can achieve ideal monitoring performance. This solution can capture UB signals to accurately estimate key parameters in the protocol’s security analysis, ultimately deriving a tight bound for the secure bit rate. Simulations show that this solution approximates the performance of ideal light sources in the presence of untrusted sources and effectively mitigates the impact of light-source fluctuations. It outperforms other solutions in key performance metrics, such as transmission distance.

The blind quantum computation (BQC) protocol allows for privacy-preserving remote quantum computations. In this paper, we introduce a remote quantum error correction code preparation protocol for BQC using a cluster state and analyze its blindness in the measurement-based quantum computation model. Our protocol requires fewer quantum resources than previous methods, as it only needs weak coherent pulses, eliminating the need for quantum memory and limited quantum computing. The results of our theoretical analysis and simulations show that our protocol requires fewer quantum resources compared to non-coding methods with the same qubit error rate.