Multiphoton entanglement concentration and quantum cryptography.

Multiphoton states from parametric down-conversion can be entangled both in polarization and photon number. Maximal high-dimensional entanglement can be concentrated postselectively from these states via photon counting. This makes them natural candidates for quantum key distribution, where the presence of more than one photon per detection interval has up to now been considered undesirable. We propose a simple multiphoton cryptography protocol for the case of low losses.