Composable security of delegated quantum computation

Delegating difficult computations to remote large computation facilities, with appropriate security guarantees, is a possible solution for the ever-growing needs of personal computing power. For delegated computation protocols to be usable in a larger context---or simply to securely run two protocols in parallel---the security definitions need to be composable. Here, we define composable security for delegated quantum computation. We distinguish between protocols which provide only blindness---the computation is hidden from the server---and those that are also verifiable---the client can check that it has received the correct result. We show that the composable security definition capturing both these notions can be reduced to a combination of several distinct "trace-distance-type" criteria---which are, individually, non-composable security definitions. Additionally, we study the security of some known delegated quantum computation protocols, including Broadbent, Fitzsimons and Kashefi's Universal Blind Quantum Computation protocol. Even though these protocols were originally proposed with insufficient security criteria, they turn out to still be secure given the stronger composable definitions.Comment: 37+9 pages, 13 figures. v3: minor changes, new references. v2: extended the reduction between composable and local security to include entangled inputs, substantially rewritten the introduction to the Abstract Cryptography (AC) framewor

Domain-wall depinning assisted by pure spin currents

We study the depinning of domain walls by pure diffusive spin currents in a nonlocal spin valve structure based on two ferromagnetic permalloy elements with copper as the nonmagnetic spin conduit. The injected spin current is absorbed by the second permalloy structure with a domain wall and from the dependence of the wall depinning field on the spin current density we find an efficiency of 6*10^{-14}T/(A/m^2), which is more than an order of magnitude larger than for conventional current induced domain wall motion. Theoretically we reproduce this high efficiency, which arises from the surface torques exerted by the absorbed spin current that lead to efficient depinning.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Hubbard band or oxygen vacancy states in the correlated electron metal SrVO3_3?

We study the effect of oxygen vacancies on the electronic structure of the model strongly correlated metal SrVO$_3$. By means of angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) synchrotron experiments, we investigate the systematic effect of the UV dose on the measured spectra. We observe the onset of a spurious dose-dependent prominent peak at an energy range were the lower Hubbard band has been previously reported in this compound, raising questions on its previous interpretation. By a careful analysis of the dose dependent effects we succeed in disentangling the contributions coming from the oxygen vacancy states and from the lower Hubbard band. We obtain the intrinsic ARPES spectrum for the zero-vacancy limit, where a clear signal of a lower Hubbard band remains. We support our study by means of state-of-the-art ab initio calculations that include correlation effects and the presence of oxygen vacancies. Our results underscore the relevance of potential spurious states affecting ARPES experiments in correlated metals, which are associated to the ubiquitous oxygen vacancies as extensively reported in the context of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the surface of insulating $d^0$ transition metal oxides.Comment: Manuscript + Supplemental Material, 12 pages, 9 figure

FACT -- the First Cherenkov Telescope using a G-APD Camera for TeV Gamma-ray Astronomy (HEAD 2010)

Geiger-mode Avalanche Photodiodes (G-APD) bear the potential to significantly improve the sensitivity of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT). We are currently building the First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) by refurbishing an old IACT with a mirror area of 9.5 square meters and construct a new, fine pixelized camera using novel G-APDs. The main goal is to evaluate the performance of a complete system by observing very high energy gamma-rays from the Crab Nebula. This is an important field test to check the feasibility of G-APD-based cameras to replace at some time the PMT-based cameras of planned future IACTs like AGIS and CTA. In this article, we present the basic design of such a camera as well as some important details to be taken into account.Comment: Poster shown at HEAD 2010, Big Island, Hawaii, March 1-4, 201

On the Gold Standard for Security of Universal Steganography

While symmetric-key steganography is quite well understood both in the information-theoretic and in the computational setting, many fundamental questions about its public-key counterpart resist persistent attempts to solve them. The computational model for public-key steganography was proposed by von Ahn and Hopper in EUROCRYPT 2004. At TCC 2005, Backes and Cachin gave the first universal public-key stegosystem - i.e. one that works on all channels - achieving security against replayable chosen-covertext attacks (SS-RCCA) and asked whether security against non-replayable chosen-covertext attacks (SS-CCA) is achievable. Later, Hopper (ICALP 2005) provided such a stegosystem for every efficiently sampleable channel, but did not achieve universality. He posed the question whether universality and SS-CCA-security can be achieved simultaneously. No progress on this question has been achieved since more than a decade. In our work we solve Hopper's problem in a somehow complete manner: As our main positive result we design an SS-CCA-secure stegosystem that works for every memoryless channel. On the other hand, we prove that this result is the best possible in the context of universal steganography. We provide a family of 0-memoryless channels - where the already sent documents have only marginal influence on the current distribution - and prove that no SS-CCA-secure steganography for this family exists in the standard non-look-ahead model.Comment: EUROCRYPT 2018, llncs styl