Fault tolerant quantum key distribution based on quantum dense coding with collective noise

Abstract

We present two robust quantum key distribution protocols against two kinds of collective noise, following some ideas in quantum dense coding. Three-qubit entangled states are used as quantum information carriers, two of which forming the logical qubit which is invariant with a special type of collective noise. The information is encoded on logical qubits with four unitary operations, which can be read out faithfully with Bell-state analysis on two physical qubits and a single-photon measurement on the other physical qubit, not three-photon joint measurements. Two bits of information are exchanged faithfully and securely by transmitting two physical qubits through a noisy channel. When the losses in the noisy channel is low, these protocols can be used to transmit a secret message directly in principle.