Practical security analysis of continuous-variable quantum key distribution with an unbalanced heterodyne detector

When developing a practical continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD), the detector is necessary at the receiver’s side. We investigate the practical security of the CVQKD system with an unbalanced heterodyne detector. The results show that unbalanced heterodyne detector introduces extra excess noise into the system and decreases the lower bound of the secret key rate without awareness of the legitimate communicators, which leaves loopholes for Eve to attack the system. In addition, we find that the secret key rate decreases more severely with the increase in the degree of imbalance and the excess noise induced by the imbalance is proportional to the intensity of the local oscillator (LO) under the same degree of imbalance. Finally, a countermeasure is proposed to resist these kinds of effects.