Quantum Authenticated Key Expansion with Key Recycling

Data privacy and authentication are two main security requirements for remote access and cloud services. While QKD has been explored to address data privacy concerns, oftentimes its use is separate from the client authentication protocol despite implicitly providing authentication. Here, we present a quantum authentication key expansion (QAKE) protocol that (1) integrates both authentication and key expansion within a single protocol, and (2) provides key recycling property – allowing all authentication keys to be reused. We analyse the security of the protocol in a QAKE framework adapted from a classical authentication key exchange (AKE) framework, providing separate security conditions for authentication and data privacy. We experimentally implemented the protocol with appropriate post-selection. Additional results on the security of pseudorandom basis generation in QAKE and decoy state BB84 are provided.