Practical limitation for continuous-variable quantum cryptography using coherent States

Phys Rev Lett. 2004 Mar 19;92(11):117901. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.117901. Epub 2004 Mar 16.

Abstract

In this Letter, first, we investigate the security of a continuous-variable quantum cryptographic scheme with a postselection process against individual beam splitting attack. It is shown that the scheme can be secure in the presence of the transmission loss owing to the postselection. Second, we provide a loss limit for continuous-variable quantum cryptography using coherent states taking into account excess Gaussian noise on quadrature distribution. Since the excess noise is reduced by the loss mechanism, a realistic intercept-resend attack which makes a Gaussian mixture of coherent states gives a loss limit in the presence of any excess Gaussian noise.