High key rate quantum conference key agreement with unconditional security

Abstract: Quantum cryptography is a major ingredient of the future quantum internet that promises various secure communication tasks. Quantum conference key agreement (CKA) is an important cryptographic primitive of quantum cryptography, which provides the conference key among multiple users simultaneously. However, quantum CKA is currently far from practical application due to the low conference key rate. Here, we propose a quantum CKA protocol of three users with information-theoretic security. Our protocol only requires phase-randomized weak coherent sources and threshold single-photon detectors, and is anticipated to be experimentally demonstrated over 600 km under current technology. Our scheme can be widely implemented in the approaching large-scale quantum network.