Mismatched-basis statistics enable quantum key distribution with uncharacterized qubit sources
Zhen−Qiang Yin, Chi‐Hang Fred Fung, Xiongfeng Ma, Chun-Mei Zhang, Hong-Wei Li, Wei Chen, Shuang Wang, Guang‐Can Guo, Zheng‐Fu Han · Physical Review A · 2014
In the postprocessing of quantum key distribution, the raw key bits from the mismatched-basis measurements, where two parties use different bases, are normally discarded. Here, we propose a postprocessing method that exploits measurement statistics from mismatched-basis cases and prove that incorporating these statistics enables uncharacterized qubit sources to be used in the measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution protocol and the Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol, which is otherwise impossible.