Cecilia Clivati

Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution (TF-QKD) is an innovative family of protocols characterized by a weaker dependence of the achievable secret key rate on the channel loss, with respect to conventional QKD solutions. In this work, we discuss several important aspects encountered in TF-QKD when transitioning from point-to-point links to a network configuration. 1) The effects of path length mismatch between the two arms of the link (A-C and B-C) is discussed in several configurations. 2) The noise contributions (stronger in in-field deployment) are meticulously analyzed, their effect on the final key rate is estimated and solutions to mitigate the problem are implemented. 3) The topic of building complex and large networks with TF-QKD is tackled to find advantageous configurations. Interconnected macro-star networks based on TF-QKD are simulated by means of the “qkdnetsim” package of the network simulator “ns3”. The upcoming deployment of national QKD networks requires dedicated studies in this direction to build efficient and long-range solutions, compatible with current telecom standards.