Approximate Quantum Error-Correcting Codes and Secret Sharing Schemes

It is a standard result in the theory of quantum error-correcting codes that no code of length n can fix more than n/4 arbitrary errors, regardless of the dimension of the coding and encoded Hilbert spaces. However, this bound only applies to codes which recover the message exactly. Naively, one might expect that correcting errors to very high fidelity would only allow small violations of this bound. This intuition is incorrect: in this paper we describe quantum error-correcting codes capable of correcting up to (n-1)/2 arbitrary errors with fidelity exponentially close to 1, at the price of increasing the size of the registers (i.e., the coding alphabet). This demonstrates a sharp distinction between exact and approximate quantum error correction. The codes have the property that any $t$ components reveal no information about the message, and so they can also be viewed as error-tolerant secret sharing schemes. The construction has several interesting implications for cryptography and quantum information theory. First, it suggests that secret sharing is a better classical analogue to quantum error correction than is classical error correction. Second, it highlights an error in a purported proof that verifiable quantum secret sharing (VQSS) is impossible when the number of cheaters t is n/4. More generally, the construction illustrates a difference between exact and approximate requirements in quantum cryptography and (yet again) the delicacy of security proofs and impossibility results in the quantum model.Comment: 14 pages, no figure

Multi-party Quantum Computation

We investigate definitions of and protocols for multi-party quantum computing in the scenario where the secret data are quantum systems. We work in the quantum information-theoretic model, where no assumptions are made on the computational power of the adversary. For the slightly weaker task of verifiable quantum secret sharing, we give a protocol which tolerates any t < n/4 cheating parties (out of n). This is shown to be optimal. We use this new tool to establish that any multi-party quantum computation can be securely performed as long as the number of dishonest players is less than n/6.Comment: Masters Thesis. Based on Joint work with Claude Crepeau and Daniel Gottesman. Full version is in preparatio

Multiparty quantum secret splitting and quantum state sharing

A protocol for multiparty quantum secret splitting is proposed with an ordered $N$ EPR pairs and Bell state measurements. It is secure and has the high intrinsic efficiency and source capacity as almost all the instances are useful and each EPR pair carries two bits of message securely. Moreover, we modify it for multiparty quantum state sharing of an arbitrary $m$-particle entangled state based on quantum teleportation with only Bell state measurements and local unitary operations which make this protocol more convenient in a practical application than others.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. The revision of the manuscript appeared in PLA. Some procedures for detecting cheat have been added. Then the security loophole in the original manuscript has been eliminate

Quantum multiparty key distribution protocol without use of entanglement

We propose a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol that enables three parties agree at once on a shared common random bit string in presence of an eavesdropper without use of entanglement. We prove its unconditional security and analyze the key rate.Comment: 8 pages, no figur