Improvement of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution using optical amplifiers

Abstract

The imperfections of a receiver's detector affect the performance of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols and are difficult to adjust in practical situations. We propose a method to improve the performance of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution by adding a parameter-adjustable optical amplifier at the receiver. A security analysis is derived against a two-mode collective entangling cloner attack. Our simulations show that the proposed method can improve the performance of protocols as long as the inherent noise of the amplifier is lower than a critical value, defined as the tolerable amplifier noise. Furthermore, the optimal performance can approach the scenario where a perfect detector is used.