The paper presents the implementation of a quantum cryptography protocol for secure communication. As computing power increases, classical cryptography and key management schemes based on computational complexity become increasingly susceptible to brute force and cryptanalytic attacks. Current implementations of quantum cryptography are based on the BB84 protocol, which is susceptible to siphoning attacks on the multiple photons emitted by practical laser sources. The three-stage protocol, whose implementation is described in this paper, is a departure from conventional practice and it obviates some of the known vulnerabilities of the current implementations of quantum cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of the three-stage quantum communication protocol in free-space. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first implementation of a quantum protocol where multiple photons can be used for secure communication.
S. Mandal, G. Macdonald, M. El Rifai, N. Punekar, F. Zamani, Y. Chen, S. Kak, P. Verma, R. Huck, J. Sluss, "Multi-Photon Implementation of Three-Stage Quantum Cryptography Protocol," in Proceedings of International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN) 2013, January 2013.
* This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers 1117148, 1117179, and 1117068. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.