Quantum Internet signifies a remarkable advancement in communication technology, harnessing the principles of quantum entanglement and superposition to facilitate unparalleled levels of security and efficient computations. Quantum communication can be achieved through the utilization of quantum entanglement. Through the exchange of entangled pairs between two entities, quantum communication becomes feasible, enabled by the process of quantum teleportation. Given the lossy nature of the channels and the exponential decoherence of the transmitted photons, a set of intermediate nodes can serve as quantum repeaters to perform entanglement swapping and directly entangle two distant nodes. Such quantum repeaters may be malicious and by setting up malicious entanglements, intermediate nodes can jeopardize the confidentiality of the quantum information exchanged between the two communication nodes. Hence, this paper proposes a quantum identity authentication protocol that protects quantum networks from malicious entanglements. Unlike the existing protocols, the proposed quantum authentication protocol does not require periodic refreshments of the shared secret keys. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol can detect malicious entanglements with a 100% probability after an average of 4 authentication rounds.

翻译：量子互联网标志着通信技术的重大进步，利用量子纠缠和叠加原理实现前所未有的安全性和高效计算。通过利用量子纠缠可以实现量子通信。通过两个实体之间交换纠缠对，借助量子隐形传态过程，量子通信成为可能。考虑到信道的损耗特性和传输光子的指数退相干，一组中间节点可作为量子中继器执行纠缠交换，直接纠缠两个远程节点。此类量子中继器可能具有恶意，通过建立恶意纠缠，中间节点可能危及两个通信节点之间交换的量子信息的机密性。为此，本文提出一种保护量子网络免受恶意纠缠攻击的量子身份认证协议。与现有协议不同，所提出的量子认证协议无需定期刷新共享密钥。仿真结果表明，该协议在平均4次认证轮次后，能够以100%的概率检测到恶意纠缠。