In this paper, we prove that the unconditionally secure key can be surprisingly extracted from multiphoton emission part in the photon polarization-based quantum key distribution. One example is shown by explicitly proving that one can indeed generate an unconditionally secure key from Alice’s two-photon emission part proposed by Scarani [ et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 057901 (2004)]. Which is called the Scarani-Acin-Ribordy-Gisin (SARG04) protocol. This protocol uses the same four states as in Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) and differs only in the classical postprocessing protocol. It is, thus, interesting to see how the classical postprocessing of quantum key distribution might qualitatively change its security. We also show that one can generate an unconditionally secure key from the single to the four-photon part in a generalized SARG04 protocol that uses six states. Finally, we also compare the bit error rate threshold of these protocols with the one in the BB84 protocol and the original six-state protocol assuming a depolarizing channel.

• Received 9 December 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.73.010302