Name: Margarida Pereira
Nationality: Portuguese
Project: Security analysis of practical decoy-state QKD systems
Location: University of Vigo, Spain
Supervisor: Prof. Marcos Curty

Short bio

After finishing high school in Porto I went to study abroad in Scotland. I received an MSci degree from University of Glasgow in Theoretical Physics. My Master’s project was in “The physics of quantum measurement” supervised by Dr. Sarah Croke. Currently, I am doing a PhD in the Department of Signal Theory and Communications at Vigo.

Research profile

The goal of my project is to analyse the security of practical implementations of discrete-variable QKD systems. Theoretically, QKD can offer unconditional security based on the laws of physics however, at the moment it does not, because typical security proofs of QKD have assumptions that are not actually met by current implementations. These proofs ignore many experimental device imperfections and hence they cannot be applied to practical realisations. My aim is to develop efficient security proofs for the finite sample-size setting scenario that can include typical devices’ flaws to be applied to QKD experiments, particularly to decoy-state-based QKD platforms.

Scientific areas of interest

I am interested in QKD and how it can be used to achieve secure communications. Furthermore, I enjoy Quantum Information and Quantum Measurement.