Proof-of-principle demonstration of semi-quantum key distribution based on the Mirror protocol

Semi-quantum key distribution (SQKD) is used to establish a string of shared secret keys between a quantum party and a classical party. Here, we report the first proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of SQKD based on the Mirror protocol, which is the most experimentally feasible SQKD protocol, and equipped with time-phase encoding scheme employing the method of selective modulation. The experiment was performed at a repetition frequency of 62.5 MHz and a high raw key rate arrived at 69.8 kbps, and the average quantum bit error rate was found to be 4.56% and 2.78% for the “SWAP-x-Z” (\(\mathrm{x}\in \{01,10\}\)) and the “CTRL-X”, respectively. The results demonstrate the feasibility of our system, and this study is helpful for future research on SQKD experiments.