  We consider the secret key generation problem when sources are randomly
excited by the sender and there is a noiseless public discussion channel. Our
setting is thus similar to recent works on channels with action-dependent
states where the channel state may be influenced by some of the parties
involved. We derive single-letter expressions for the secret key capacity
through a type of source emulation analysis. We also derive lower bounds on the
achievable reliability and secrecy exponents, i.e., the exponential rates of
decay of the probability of decoding error and of the information leakage.
These exponents allow us to determine a set of strongly-achievable secret key
rates. For degraded eavesdroppers the maximum strongly-achievable rate equals
the secret key capacity; our exponents can also be specialized to previously
known results.
  In deriving our strong achievability results we introduce a coding scheme
that combines wiretap coding (to excite the channel) and key extraction (to
distill keys from residual randomness). The secret key capacity is naturally
seen to be a combination of both source- and channel-type randomness. Through
examples we illustrate a fundamental interplay between the portion of the
secret key rate due to each type of randomness. We also illustrate inherent
tradeoffs between the achievable reliability and secrecy exponents. Our new
scheme also naturally accommodates rate limits on the public discussion. We
show that under rate constraints we are able to achieve larger rates than those
that can be attained through a pure source emulation strategy.
