Quantum cryptography offers a wonderful source for current and future research. The idea started in the early 1970s, and it continues to inspire work and development toward a popular goal, large-scale communication networks with strong security guarantees, based on quantum-mechanical properties. Quantum cryptography builds on the idea of exploiting physical properties to establish secure cryptographic operations. A particular quantum-based protocol has gathered interest in recent years for its use of mesoscopic coherent states. The AlphaEta protocol has been designed to exploit properties of coherent states of light to transmit data securely over an optical channel. AlphaEta aims to draw security from the uncertainty of any measurement of the transmitted coherent states due to intrinsic quantum noise. We propose a framework to combine this protocol with classical preprocessing, taking into account error-correction for the optical channel and establishing a strong provable security guarantee. Integrating a state-of-the-art solution for fast authenticated encryption is straightforward, but in this case the security analysis requires heuristic reasoning. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection