Experimental generation of asymmetric keys from the parity structure of a two-photon six-qubit entangled state

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an asymmetric key-generation scheme in which public and private keys are derived from a six-qubit photonic entangled state. A six-qubit entangled state is generated from two photons, each carrying one polarization and two path qubits. The state is prepared in an equal superposition of eight of the sixty-four six-qubit basis states, in which each photon's three qubits form a codeword of the classical [3,2,2] even-parity code, and are distributed between the two parties, Alice and Bob. This ensures, each triple is a uniformly random codeword and the two codewords are locked together through the correlation. The parity constraint is a local stabilizer, so each party verifies it on its own data every round, and eliminates the bit flip errors arising from imperfections, detector dark counts and multiple occupancy before it enters the raw key. A single publicly announced bit, chosen at random from either of the path qubits, allows each party to reconstruct the other's full triple while leaking no information to third party. We realize the desired six-qubit state using a Sagnac-based type-II SPDC source, reporting a Bell-CHSH parameter S = 2.798 +/- 0.008, by implementing gate operation on polarization and path degree's of freedom. This approach provides a physics-based alternative to public-key cryptosystems built on computational hardness assumptions. A t-bit string generated from multiple rounds for encryption will be intrinsically random. Without the private key, one needs at least O(2^t) runs on an t-qubit quantum system to find the matching bit to decrypt.

Source: arXiv:2610.12264v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2610.12264v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.12264v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2610.12264v1