1,264 research outputs found
Multiparty Quantum Signature Schemes
Digital signatures are widely used in electronic communications to secure
important tasks such as financial transactions, software updates, and legal
contracts. The signature schemes that are in use today are based on public-key
cryptography and derive their security from computational assumptions. However,
it is possible to construct unconditionally secure signature protocols. In
particular, using quantum communication, it is possible to construct signature
schemes with security based on fundamental principles of quantum mechanics.
Several quantum signature protocols have been proposed, but none of them has
been explicitly generalized to more than three participants, and their security
goals have not been formally defined. Here, we first extend the security
definitions of Swanson and Stinson (2011) so that they can apply also to the
quantum case, and introduce a formal definition of transferability based on
different verification levels. We then prove several properties that multiparty
signature protocols with information-theoretic security -- quantum or classical
-- must satisfy in order to achieve their security goals. We also express two
existing quantum signature protocols with three parties in the security
framework we have introduced. Finally, we generalize a quantum signature
protocol given in Wallden-Dunjko-Kent-Andersson (2015) to the multiparty case,
proving its security against forging, repudiation and non-transferability.
Notably, this protocol can be implemented using any point-to-point quantum key
distribution network and therefore is ready to be experimentally demonstrated.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure
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
Quantum protocols for anonymous voting and surveying
We describe quantum protocols for voting and surveying. A key feature of our
schemes is the use of entangled states to ensure that the votes are anonymous
and to allow the votes to be tallied. The entanglement is distributed over
separated sites; the physical inaccessibility of any one site is sufficient to
guarantee the anonymity of the votes. The security of these protocols with
respect to various kinds of attack is discussed. We also discuss classical
schemes and show that our quantum voting protocol represents a N-fold reduction
in computational complexity, where N is the number of voters.Comment: 8 pages. V2 includes the modifications made for the published versio
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
Kak's three-stage protocol of secure quantum communication revisited: Hitherto unknown strengths and weaknesses of the protocol
Kak's three-stage protocol for quantum key distribution is revisited with
special focus on its hitherto unknown strengths and weaknesses. It is shown
that this protocol can be used for secure direct quantum communication.
Further, the implementability of this protocol in the realistic situation is
analyzed by considering various Markovian noise models. It is found that the
Kak's protocol and its variants in their original form can be implemented only
in a restricted class of noisy channels, where the protocols can be transformed
to corresponding protocols based on logical qubits in decoherence free
subspace. Specifically, it is observed that Kak's protocol can be implemented
in the presence of collective rotation and collective dephasing noise, but
cannot be implemented in its original form in the presence of other types of
noise, like amplitude damping and phase damping noise. Further, the performance
of the protocol in the noisy environment is quantified by computing average
fidelity under various noise models, and subsequently a set of preferred states
for secure communication in noisy environment have also been identified.Comment: Kak's protocol is not suitable for quantum cryptography in presence
of nois
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