2,830 research outputs found
Towards Communication-Efficient Quantum Oblivious Key Distribution
Oblivious Transfer, a fundamental problem in the field of secure multi-party
computation is defined as follows: A database DB of N bits held by Bob is
queried by a user Alice who is interested in the bit DB_b in such a way that
(1) Alice learns DB_b and only DB_b and (2) Bob does not learn anything about
Alice's choice b. While solutions to this problem in the classical domain rely
largely on unproven computational complexity theoretic assumptions, it is also
known that perfect solutions that guarantee both database and user privacy are
impossible in the quantum domain. Jakobi et al. [Phys. Rev. A, 83(2), 022301,
Feb 2011] proposed a protocol for Oblivious Transfer using well known QKD
techniques to establish an Oblivious Key to solve this problem. Their solution
provided a good degree of database and user privacy (using physical principles
like impossibility of perfectly distinguishing non-orthogonal quantum states
and the impossibility of superluminal communication) while being loss-resistant
and implementable with commercial QKD devices (due to the use of SARG04).
However, their Quantum Oblivious Key Distribution (QOKD) protocol requires a
communication complexity of O(N log N). Since modern databases can be extremely
large, it is important to reduce this communication as much as possible. In
this paper, we first suggest a modification of their protocol wherein the
number of qubits that need to be exchanged is reduced to O(N). A subsequent
generalization reduces the quantum communication complexity even further in
such a way that only a few hundred qubits are needed to be transferred even for
very large databases.Comment: 7 page
Exponential Lower Bound for 2-Query Locally Decodable Codes via a Quantum Argument
A locally decodable code encodes n-bit strings x in m-bit codewords C(x), in
such a way that one can recover any bit x_i from a corrupted codeword by
querying only a few bits of that word. We use a quantum argument to prove that
LDCs with 2 classical queries need exponential length: m=2^{Omega(n)}.
Previously this was known only for linear codes (Goldreich et al. 02). Our
proof shows that a 2-query LDC can be decoded with only 1 quantum query, and
then proves an exponential lower bound for such 1-query locally
quantum-decodable codes. We also show that q quantum queries allow more
succinct LDCs than the best known LDCs with q classical queries. Finally, we
give new classical lower bounds and quantum upper bounds for the setting of
private information retrieval. In particular, we exhibit a quantum 2-server PIR
scheme with O(n^{3/10}) qubits of communication, improving upon the O(n^{1/3})
bits of communication of the best known classical 2-server PIR.Comment: 16 pages Latex. 2nd version: title changed, large parts rewritten,
some results added or improve
Quantum Cryptography Based Solely on Bell's Theorem
Information-theoretic key agreement is impossible to achieve from scratch and
must be based on some - ultimately physical - premise. In 2005, Barrett, Hardy,
and Kent showed that unconditional security can be obtained in principle based
on the impossibility of faster-than-light signaling; however, their protocol is
inefficient and cannot tolerate any noise. While their key-distribution scheme
uses quantum entanglement, its security only relies on the impossibility of
superluminal signaling, rather than the correctness and completeness of quantum
theory. In particular, the resulting security is device independent. Here we
introduce a new protocol which is efficient in terms of both classical and
quantum communication, and that can tolerate noise in the quantum channel. We
prove that it offers device-independent security under the sole assumption that
certain non-signaling conditions are satisfied. Our main insight is that the
XOR of a number of bits that are partially secret according to the
non-signaling conditions turns out to be highly secret. Note that similar
statements have been well-known in classical contexts. Earlier results had
indicated that amplification of such non-signaling-based privacy is impossible
to achieve if the non-signaling condition only holds between events on Alice's
and Bob's sides. Here, we show that the situation changes completely if such a
separation is given within each of the laboratories.Comment: 32 pages, v2: changed introduction, added reference
Unconditional security at a low cost
By simulating four quantum key distribution (QKD) experiments and analyzing
one decoy-state QKD experiment, we compare two data post-processing schemes
based on security against individual attack by L\"{u}tkenhaus, and
unconditional security analysis by Gottesman-Lo-L\"{u}tkenhaus-Preskill. Our
results show that these two schemes yield close performances. Since the Holy
Grail of QKD is its unconditional security, we conclude that one is better off
considering unconditional security, rather than restricting to individual
attacks.Comment: Accepted by International Conference on Quantum Foundation and
Technology: Frontier and Future 2006 (ICQFT'06
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