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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Phys.

Sec. Quantum Engineering and Technology

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1563674

This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Quantum Technologies and Theoretical Progress in Quantum Information Processing Through Single-Photon Nonlinearity View all articles

Mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol with single-particle measurement

Provisionally accepted
Hao Yang Hao Yang 1Zepu Yi Zepu Yi 1Songfeng Lu Songfeng Lu 1*Mu Wang Mu Wang 2
  • 1 Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
  • 2 University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In this paper, a mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocol with single-particle measurement is proposed. The participants can authenticate each other's identity through their secret identity information and the entanglement property of Bell states. After the authentication phase, the participants can negotiate a private key with equal contribution. We prove that the proposed scheme is unconditional security. In comparison to the previous mutual authentication quantum key agreement protocols, the proposed method utilizes Bell states as the quantum resource states in both the identity authentication and key agreement stages. It requires single particle measurement without the need for Bell measurements or the involvement of trusted or semi-trusted other participants. Additionally, our proposed scheme demonstrates significant advantages in terms of qubit efficiency.

    Keywords: Quantum cryptography, Quantum key agreement, Mutual authentication, Unconditional security, Bell states, Single particle measurement

    Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Yi, Lu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Songfeng Lu, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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