Semi-quantum communication: Protocols for key agreement, controlled secure direct communication and dialogue

Semi-quantum protocols that allow some of the users to remain classical are proposed for a large class of problems associated with secure communication and secure multiparty computation. Specifically, first time semi-quantum protocols are proposed for key agreement, controlled deterministic secure communication and dialogue, and it is shown that the semi-quantum protocols for controlled deterministic secure communication and dialogue can be reduced to semi-quantum protocols for e-commerce and private comparison (socialist millionaire problem), respectively. Complementing with the earlier proposed semi-quantum schemes for key distribution, secret sharing and deterministic secure communication, set of schemes proposed here and subsequent discussions have established that almost every secure communication and computation tasks that can be performed using fully quantum protocols can also be performed in semi-quantum manner. Further, it addresses a fundamental question in context of a large number problems- how much quantumness is (how many quantum parties are) required to perform a specific secure communication task? Some of the proposed schemes are completely orthogonal-state-based, and thus, fundamentally different from the existing semi-quantum schemes that are conjugate-coding-based. Security, efficiency and applicability of the proposed schemes have been discussed with appropriate importance.Comment: 19 pages 1 figur

Quantum e-commerce: A comparative study of possible protocols for online shopping and other tasks related to e-commerce

A set of quantum protocols for online shopping is proposed and analyzed to establish that it is possible to perform secure online shopping using different types of quantum resources. Specifically, a single photon based, a Bell state based and two 3-qubit entangled state based quantum online shopping schemes are proposed. The Bell state based scheme, being a completely orthogonal state based protocol, is fundamentally different from the earlier proposed schemes which were based on conjugate coding. One of the 3-qubit entangled state based scheme is build on the principle of entanglement swapping which enables us to accomplish the task without transmission of the message encoded qubits through the channel. Possible ways of generalizing the entangled state based schemes proposed here to the schemes which use multiqubit entangled states is also discussed. Further, all the proposed protocols are shown to be free from the limitations of the recently proposed protocol of Huang et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 14, 2211-2225, 2015) which allows the buyer (Alice) to change her order at a later time (after initially placing the order and getting it authenticated by the controller). The proposed schemes are also compared with the existing schemes using qubit efficiency.Comment: It's shown that quantum e-commerce is not a difficult task, and it can be done in various way

Authentication protocol based on collective quantum steering

It is well known that certain quantum correlations like quantum steering exhibit a monogamous relationship. In this paper, we exploit the asymmetric nature of quantum steering and show that there exist states which exhibit a polygamous correlation, known as collective correlation [He and Reid, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 250403 (2013)], where the state of one party, Alice, can be steered only by the joint effort of the other two parties, Bob and Charlie. As an example, we explicitly single out a particular set of $3$ qubit states which exhibit this polygamous relationship, known as collective steerability. We provide a recipe to identify the complete set of such states. We also provide a possible application of such states to an information theoretic task, termed as quantum key authentication (QKA) protocol. QKA can also be used in conjunction with other well known cryptography protocols to improve their security and we provide one such example with quantum private comparison (QPC).Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, comments appreciated :

Anonymous quantum communication

We present the first protocol for the anonymous transmission of a quantum state that is information-theoretically secure against an active adversary, without any assumption on the number of corrupt participants. The anonymity of the sender and receiver is perfectly preserved, and the privacy of the quantum state is protected except with exponentially small probability. Even though a single corrupt participant can cause the protocol to abort, the quantum state can only be destroyed with exponentially small probability: if the protocol succeeds, the state is transferred to the receiver and otherwise it remains in the hands of the sender (provided the receiver is honest).Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Proceedings of ASIACRYPT, 200

Energy efficient mining on a quantum-enabled blockchain using light

We outline a quantum-enabled blockchain architecture based on a consortium of quantum servers. The network is hybridised, utilising digital systems for sharing and processing classical information combined with a fibre--optic infrastructure and quantum devices for transmitting and processing quantum information. We deliver an energy efficient interactive mining protocol enacted between clients and servers which uses quantum information encoded in light and removes the need for trust in network infrastructure. Instead, clients on the network need only trust the transparent network code, and that their devices adhere to the rules of quantum physics. To demonstrate the energy efficiency of the mining protocol, we elaborate upon the results of two previous experiments (one performed over 1km of optical fibre) as applied to this work. Finally, we address some key vulnerabilities, explore open questions, and observe forward--compatibility with the quantum internet and quantum computing technologies.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure