Sending-or-not-sending twin-filed quantum key distribution with discrete phase modulation

Abstract: We study the sending-or-not-sending (SNS) protocol with discrete phase modulation of coherent states. We first make the security of the SNS protocol with discrete phase modulation. We then present analytic formulas for key rate calculation. We take numerical simulations for the key rate through discrete phase modulation of both the original SNS protocol and the SNS protocol with two way classical communications of active-odd-parity pairing (AOPP). Our numerical simulation results show that only with $6$ phase values, the key rates of the SNS protocol can exceed the linear bound, and with $12$ phase values, the key rates are very close to the results of the SNS protocol with continuously modulated phase-randomization.