iAQC: The Intensity-Aware Quantum Cryptography Protocol
This is an incremental improvement for quantum cryptography, potentially enhancing security in low-intensity laser applications.
The paper tackles the problem of eavesdropping in quantum cryptography by introducing iAQC, a variant of the three-stage protocol that tracks laser intensity in low-intensity regimes, making it harder for eavesdroppers to monitor the channel compared to the standard K06 protocol.
This paper reports a variant of the three-stage quantum cryptography protocol which can be used in low intensity laser output regimes. The variant, which tracks the intensity of the laser beam at the intermediate stages, makes the task of the eavesdropper harder than the standard K06 protocol. The constraints on the iAQC protocol are much less than those on BB84 and in principle it can not only be used for key distribution but also for direct bitwise encryption of data. The iAQC protocol is an improvement on the K06 protocol in that it makes it harder for the eavesdropper to monitor the channel.