49,858 research outputs found
Transformations between symmetric sets of quantum states
We investigate probabilistic transformations of quantum states from a
`source' set to a `target' set of states. Such transforms have many
applications. They can be used for tasks which include state-dependent cloning
or quantum state discrimination, and as interfaces between systems whose
information encodings are not related by a unitary transform, such as
continuous-variable systems and finite-dimensional systems. In a probabilistic
transform, information may be lost or leaked, and we explain the concepts of
leak and redundancy. Following this, we show how the analysis of probabilistic
transforms significantly simplifies for symmetric source and target sets of
states. In particular, we give a simple linear program which solves the task of
finding optimal transforms, and a method of characterizing the introduced leak
and redundancy in information-theoretic terms. Using the developed techniques,
we analyse a class of transforms which convert coherent states with information
encoded in their relative phase to symmetric qubit states. Each of these sets
of states on their own appears in many well studied quantum information
protocols. Finally, we suggest an asymptotic realization based on quantum
scissors.Comment: 10 pages; 5 figure
The security of NTP's datagram protocol
For decades, the Network Time Protocol (NTP) has been
used to synchronize computer clocks over untrusted network paths. This
work takes a new look at the security of NTP’s datagram protocol. We
argue that NTP’s datagram protocol in RFC5905 is both underspecified
and flawed. The NTP specifications do not sufficiently respect (1) the
conflicting security requirements of different NTP modes, and (2) the
mechanism NTP uses to prevent off-path attacks. A further problem
is that (3) NTP’s control-query interface reveals sensitive information
that can be exploited in off-path attacks. We exploit these problems
in several attacks that remote attackers can use to maliciously alter a
target’s time. We use network scans to find millions of IPs that are
vulnerable to our attacks. Finally, we move beyond identifying attacks
by developing a cryptographic model and using it to prove the security
of a new backwards-compatible client/server protocol for NTP.https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1006.pdfhttps://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1006.pdfPublished versio
Device independent quantum key distribution secure against coherent attacks with memoryless measurement devices
Device independent quantum key distribution aims to provide a higher degree
of security than traditional QKD schemes by reducing the number of assumptions
that need to be made about the physical devices used. The previous proof of
security by Pironio et al. applies only to collective attacks where the state
is identical and independent and the measurement devices operate identically
for each trial in the protocol. We extend this result to a more general class
of attacks where the state is arbitrary and the measurement devices have no
memory. We accomplish this by a reduction of arbitrary adversary strategies to
qubit strategies and a proof of security for qubit strategies based on the
previous proof by Pironio et al. and techniques adapted from Renner.Comment: 13 pages. Expanded main proofs with more detail, miscellaneous edits
for clarit
Strategic Experimentation with Private Payoffs
We consider two players facing identical discrete-time bandit problems with a safe and a risky arm. In any period, the risky arm yields either a success or a failure, and the first success reveals the risky arm to dominate the safe one. When payoffs are public information, the ensuing free-rider problem is so severe that the equilibrium number of experiments is at most one plus the number of experiments that a single agent would perform. When payoffs are private information and players can communicate via cheap talk, the socially optimal symmetric experimentation profile can be supported as a perfect Bayesian equilibrium for sufficiently optimistic prior beliefs. These results generalize to more than two players whenever the success probability per period is not too high. In particular, this is the case when successes occur at the jump times of a Poisson process and the period length is sufficiently small
Programmable quantum state discriminators with simple programs
We describe a class of programmable devices that can discriminate between two
quantum states. We consider two cases. In the first, both states are unknown.
One copy of each of the unknown states is provided as input, or program, for
the two program registers, and the data state, which is guaranteed to be
prepared in one of the program states, is fed into the data register of the
device. This device will then tell us, in an optimal way, which of the
templates stored in the program registers the data state matches. In the second
case, we know one of the states while the other is unknown. One copy of the
unknown state is fed into the single program register, and the data state which
is guaranteed to be prepared in either the program state or the known state, is
fed into the data register. The device will then tell us, again optimally,
whether the data state matches the template or is the known state. We determine
two types of optimal devices. The first performs discrimination with minimum
error, the second performs optimal unambiguous discrimination. In all cases we
first treat the simpler problem of only one copy of the data state and then
generalize the treatment to n copies. In comparison to other works we find that
providing n > 1 copies of the data state yields higher success probabilities
than providing n > 1 copies of the program states.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure
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