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Direction Cryptography in Quantum Communications

Walter Simmons·Sandip Pakvasa
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Abstract

We examine a situation in which an information-carrying signal is sent from two sources to a common receiver. The radiation travels through free space in the presence of noise. The information resides in a relationship between the two beams. We inquire into whether itis possible, in principle, that the locations of the transmitters can be concealed from a party who receives the radiation and decodes the information. Direction finding entails making a set of measurements on asignal and constructing an analytic continuation of the time dependent fields from the results. The fact that this process is generally different in quantum mechanics and in classical electrodynamics is the basis in this investigation. We develop a model based upon encoding information into a microscopic, transverse, non-local quantum image (whose dimensions are of the order of a few wavelengths) and using a detector of a type recently proposed by Strekalov et al. The optical system, which uses SPDC (Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion), functions like a Heisenberg microscope: the transverse length, which encodes the signal information, is conjugate to the transverse momentum of the light. In the model, reading the signal information spoils the directional resolution of the detector, while determining the directions to the sources spoils the information content. Each beam, when examined in isolation, is random and indistinguishable from the background noise. We conclude that quantum communications can, in principle, be made secure against direction-finding, even from the party receiving the communication.

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Walter Simmons, Sandip Pakvasa. 2003-02-28. Direction Cryptography in Quantum Communications. https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0302186

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