Resource state structure for cooperative quantum key distribution.

Quantum entanglement plays a pivotal role in a number of communication protocols, like secret sharing and quantum cryptography. We consider a scenario where more than two parties are involved in a protocol and they share a multipartite entangled state. In particular, we introduce the protocol of cooperative quantum key distribution (CoQKD). In this protocol, two parties, Alice and Bob establish a key with the cooperation of other parties. Other parties control whether Alice and Bob can establish the key, its security and the key rate. We discuss the case of three parties in detail and find the necessary suitable resource states. We discuss the controlling power of the third party, Charlie. We also examine the usefulness of this new resource state for generating conference key and for cooperative teleportation. In the case of conference key, we find that recently introduced Bell inequalities can be useful to establish the security. We also generalize the scenario to more than three parties.