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Experimental measurement-device-independent quantum digital signatures

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Roberts, GL 
Lucamarini, M 
Yuan, ZL 
Dynes, JF 
Comandar, LC 

Abstract

The development of quantum networks will be paramount towards practical and secure telecommunications. These networks will need to sign and distribute information between many parties with information-theoretic security, requiring both quantum digital signatures (QDS) and quantum key distribution (QKD). Here, we introduce and experimentally realise a quantum network architecture, where the nodes are fully connected using a minimum amount of physical links. The central node of the network can act either as a totally untrusted relay, connecting the end users via the recently-introduced measurement-device-independent (MDI)-QKD, or as a trusted recipient directly communicating with the end users via QKD. Using this network, we perform a proof-of-principle demonstration of QDS mediated by MDI-QKD. For that, we devised an efficient protocol to distil multiple signatures from the same block of data, thus reducing the statistical fluctuations in the sample and greatly enhancing the final QDS rate in the finite-size scenario.

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Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

8

Publisher

Springer Nature
Sponsorship
EPSRC (1635675)
We acknowledge Ryan Amiri and Petros Wallden for their useful discussions. G.L.R. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the EPSRC CDT in Integrated Photonic and Electronic Systems and Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. M.C. acknowledges support from the Galician Regional Government (Grant No. EM2014/033, and consolidation of Research Units: AtlantTIC), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through Grant No. TEC2014-54898-R, and the European Commission (Project QCALL). I.V.P. and E.A. acknowledge financial support by EPSRC Grant EP/M013472/1.