Measurement-Device-Independent Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution

The ultimate aim of quantum key distribution (QKD) is improving the transmission distance and key generation speed. Unfortunately, it is believed to be limited by the secret-key capacity of quantum channel without quantum repeater. Recently, a novel twin-field QKD (TF-QKD) is proposed to break through the limit, where the key rate is proportional to the square-root of channel transmittance. Here, by using the vacuum and one-photon state as a qubit, we show that the TF-QKD can be regarded as a measurement-device-independent QKD (MDI-QKD) with single-photon Bell state measurement. Therefore, the MDI property of TF-QKD can be understood clearly. Importantly, the universal security proof theories can be directly used for TF-QKD, such as BB84 encoding, six-state encoding and reference-frame-independent scheme. Furthermore, we propose a feasible experimental scheme for the proof-of-principle experimental demonstration.