Performance enhancement of a decoy-state quantum key distribution using a conditionally prepared down-conversion source in the Poisson distribution

We study the behavior of decoy-state quantum key distribution systems using a conditionally prepared down-conversion source, analyzing such a source running in a mode of operation with either a thermal photon number distribution or a Poisson photon number distribution. By comparing both modes of operations to the three-intensity proposal of Wang et al., to the one-intensity proposal of Adachi et al., and to the currently demonstrated faint-laser pulse system, we demonstrate that a down-conversion source in a Poissonian mode of operation can largely enhance the performance of decoy-state quantum key distribution systems. This makes the down-conversion-based decoy-state system an interesting alternative to current technological implementations based on faint-laser pulses.