Reuse It Or Lose It: More Efficient Secure Computation Through Reuse of Encrypted Values

Two-party secure function evaluation (SFE) has become significantly more feasible, even on resource-constrained devices, because of advances in server-aided computation systems. However, there are still bottlenecks, particularly in the input validation stage of a computation. Moreover, SFE research has not yet devoted sufficient attention to the important problem of retaining state after a computation has been performed so that expensive processing does not have to be repeated if a similar computation is done again. This paper presents PartialGC, an SFE system that allows the reuse of encrypted values generated during a garbled-circuit computation. We show that using PartialGC can reduce computation time by as much as 96% and bandwidth by as much as 98% in comparison with previous outsourcing schemes for secure computation. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with two sets of experiments, one in which the garbled circuit is evaluated on a mobile device and one in which it is evaluated on a server. We also use PartialGC to build a privacy-preserving "friend finder" application for Android. The reuse of previous inputs to allow stateful evaluation represents a new way of looking at SFE and further reduces computational barriers.Comment: 20 pages, shorter conference version published in Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Pages 582-596, ACM New York, NY, US

Experimental Realization of the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm with a Six-Qubit Cluster State

We describe the first experimental realization of the Deutsch-Jozsa quantum algorithm to evaluate the properties of a 2-bit boolean function in the framework of one-way quantum computation. For this purpose a novel two-photon six-qubit cluster state was engineered. Its peculiar topological structure is the basis of the original measurement pattern allowing the algorithm realization. The good agreement of the experimental results with the theoretical predictions, obtained at $\sim$1kHz success rate, demonstrate the correct implementation of the algorithm.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, RevTe

Tail estimates for the Brownian excursion area and other Brownian areas

Several Brownian areas are considered in this paper: the Brownian excursion area, the Brownian bridge area, the Brownian motion area, the Brownian meander area, the Brownian double meander area, the positive part of Brownian bridge area, the positive part of Brownian motion area. We are interested in the asymptotics of the right tail of their density function. Inverting a double Laplace transform, we can derive, in a mechanical way, all terms of an asymptotic expansion. We illustrate our technique with the computation of the first four terms. We also obtain asymptotics for the right tail of the distribution function and for the moments. Our main tool is the two-dimensional saddle point method.Comment: 34 page

On the detection of nearly optimal solutions in the context of single-objective space mission design problems

When making decisions, having multiple options available for a possible realization of the same project can be advantageous. One way to increase the number of interesting choices is to consider, in addition to the optimal solution x*, also nearly optimal or approximate solutions; these alternative solutions differ from x* and can be in different regions – in the design space – but fulfil certain proximity to its function value f(x*). The scope of this article is the efficient computation and discretization of the set E of e–approximate solutions for scalar optimization problems. To accomplish this task, two strategies to archive and update the data of the search procedure will be suggested and investigated. To make emphasis on data storage efficiency, a way to manage significant and insignificant parameters is also presented. Further on, differential evolution will be used together with the new archivers for the computation of E. Finally, the behaviour of the archiver, as well as the efficiency of the resulting search procedure, will be demonstrated on some academic functions as well as on three models related to space mission design

A type system for Continuation Calculus

Continuation Calculus (CC), introduced by Geron and Geuvers, is a simple foundational model for functional computation. It is closely related to lambda calculus and term rewriting, but it has no variable binding and no pattern matching. It is Turing complete and evaluation is deterministic. Notions like "call-by-value" and "call-by-name" computation are available by choosing appropriate function definitions: e.g. there is a call-by-value and a call-by-name addition function. In the present paper we extend CC with types, to be able to define data types in a canonical way, and functions over these data types, defined by iteration. Data type definitions follow the so-called "Scott encoding" of data, as opposed to the more familiar "Church encoding". The iteration scheme comes in two flavors: a call-by-value and a call-by-name iteration scheme. The call-by-value variant is a double negation variant of call-by-name iteration. The double negation translation allows to move between call-by-name and call-by-value.Comment: In Proceedings CL&C 2014, arXiv:1409.259

2D Quantum Gravity on Compact Riemann Surfaces and Two-Loop Partition Function: Circumventing the c=1 Barrier?

We study two-dimensional quantum gravity on arbitrary genus Riemann surfaces in the Kaehler formalism where the basic quantum field is the (Laplacian of the) Kaehler potential. We do a careful first-principles computation of the fixed-area partition function $Z[A]$ up to and including all two-loop contributions. This includes genuine two-loop diagrams as determined by the Liouville action, one-loop diagrams resulting from the non-trivial measure on the space of metrics, as well as one-loop diagrams involving various counterterm vertices. Contrary to what is often believed, several such counterterms, in addition to the usual cosmological constant, do and must occur. We consistently determine the relevant counterterms from a one-loop computation of the full two-point Green's function of the Kaehler field. Throughout this paper we use the general spectral cutoff regularization developed recently and which is well-suited for multi-loop computations on curved manifolds. At two loops, while all "unwanted" contributions to $\ln (Z[A]/Z[A_0])$ correctly cancel, it appears that the finite coefficient of $\ln (A/A_0)$ does depend on the finite parts of certain counterterm coefficients, i.e. on the finite renormalization conditions one has to impose. There exists a choice that reproduces the famous KPZ-scaling, but it seems to be only one consistent choice among others. Maybe, this hints at the possibility that other renormalization conditions could eventually provide a way to circumvent the famous $c=1$ barrier.Comment: 54 page