Quantum key distribution using intra-particle entanglement

Abstract

We propose the use of intra-particle entanglement to enhance the security of a practical implementation of the Bennett-Brassard-1984 (BB84) quantum key distribution scheme. Intra-particle entanglement is an attractive resource since it can be easily generated using only linear optics. Security is studied under a simple model of incoherent attack for protocols involving two or all five mutually unbiased bases. In terms of efficiency of secret key generation and tolerable error rate, the latter is found to be superior to the former. We find that states that allow secrecy distillation are necessarily entangled, though they may be local. Since more powerful attacks by Eve obviously exist, our result implies that security is a strictly stronger condition than entanglement for these protocols.