Quantum key distribution: an information-theoretic view. – ( Meryem BENAMMAR / LCAR / Seminar). – 16/04/2026, 11H

Séminaire LCAR

Meryem BENAMMAR, Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE), Toulouse

Summary
With the ever-growing need for secure communication links, and the rapid evolving of quantum computing, secret key generation has become a corner stone in the design of modern communication networks. Quantum key distribution (QKD) is one of the effective approaches for secret key generation under a quantum computing threat, since its security stems from quantum mechanics (physics) and not from computational hardness of some mathematical problem. Hence, QKD falls under the so-called physical layer secret key generation. While secret key generation from classical physical sources is well established in the information-theoretic literature since the seventies, secret key generation from quantum sources is, in turn, more challenging to analyze from an information-theoretic perspective due to intrinsic differences between classical and quantum information processing tools. In this talk, based on a simple BB84 protocol, we describe an information theoretical framework to analyze and design QKD schemes by resorting to tools and results of quantum information theory, while highlighting the main differences with classical secret key generation.