Send the Key in Cleartext: Halving Key Consumption while Preserving Unconditional Security in QKD Authentication

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25496v1
• Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:36:05 GMT
• Title: Send the Key in Cleartext: Halving Key Consumption while Preserving Unconditional Security in QKD Authentication
• Abstract summary: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols require Information-Theoretically Secure (ITS) authentication of the classical channel to preserve the unconditional security of the distilled key.<n>Since QKD requires mutual authentication, two independent one-time keys are typically consumed per round, imposing a non-trivial overhead on the net secure key rate.<n>We present a novel ITS authentication scheme based on $varepsilon$-Almost Strongly Universal$ ($varepsilon$-ASU$)
• Score: 59.664950447941386
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols require Information-Theoretically Secure (ITS) authentication of the classical channel to preserve the unconditional security of the distilled key. Standard ITS schemes are based on one-time keys: once a key is used to authenticate a message, it must be discarded. Since QKD requires mutual authentication, two independent one-time keys are typically consumed per round, imposing a non-trivial overhead on the net secure key rate. In this work, we present the authentication-with-response scheme, a novel ITS authentication scheme based on $\varepsilon$-Almost Strongly Universal$_2$ ($\varepsilon$-ASU$_2$) functions, whose IT security can be established in the Universal Composability (UC) framework. The scheme achieves mutual authentication consuming a single one-time key per QKD round, halving key consumption compared to the state-of-the-art.

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