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Lett."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Mode-pairing quantum key distribution (MP-QKD) is a promising protocol immune to detector side-channel attacks and capable of breaking the repeaterless PLOB bound without global phase locking. Existing MP-QKD protocols employ weak coherent sources (WCSs) with a low probability of single-photon emission, hindering MP-QKD\u2019s performance improvement. We propose a new, to the best of our knowledge, MP-QKD protocol using the heralded single-photon source (HSPS) to significantly reduce the vacuum emission probability and increase the single-photon emission rate. Compared with the original WCS-MP-QKD protocol, this protocol has three advantages. First, its maximum transmission distance is extended from 488\u2009km to 560\u2009km. Second, the key rates at 100, 200, 300, and 400\u2009km are 4.4 to 7.4 times those of the original protocol. Third, it does not change the original architecture of MP-QKD and is easy to implement experimentally. This HSPS-MP-QKD protocol has application potential in future metropolitan area QKD networks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1364\/ol.607299","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,4]],"date-time":"2026-09-04T16:00:10Z","timestamp":1788537610000},"page":"5429","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Mode-pairing quantum key distribution with a heralded single-photon source"],"prefix":"10.1364","volume":"51","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-3333-3257","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Cheng","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/043bpky34","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jia-Wei","family":"Ying","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/043bpky34","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Cheng","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Lan","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yin","family":"Ma","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Beijing QBoson Quantum Technology Co. 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