A Survey on Quantum Cryptography

Quantum cryptography (QC) as an important technology to protect the security of the future network communication, has gained extensive attention from both academia and industry in recent years. This paper provides a concise up-to-date review of QC, including Quantum key distribution (QKD), Quantum authentication, Quantum public-key cryptography (QPKC), and so on. Our aim is to pave a comprehensive and solid starting ground for interested readers. We firstly clarify the definition of QC. Secondly, we present the current understanding of QC from different levels, including the basic knowledge of quantum information processing, QC protocols and the attacks in QC. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in this hopeful field.