QKD-based quantum private query without a failure probability

In this paper, we present a quantum-key-distribution (QKD)-based quantum private query (QPQ) protocol utilizing single-photon signal of multiple optical pulses. It maintains the advantages of the QKD-based QPQ, i.e., easy to implement and loss tolerant. In addition, different from the situations in the previous QKD-based QPQ protocols, in our protocol, the number of the items an honest user will obtain is always one and the failure probability is always zero. This characteristic not only improves the stability (in the sense that, ignoring the noise and the attack, the protocol would always succeed), but also benefits the privacy of the database (since the database will no more reveal additional secrets to the honest users). Furthermore, for the user's privacy, the proposed protocol is cheat sensitive, and for security of the database, we obtain an upper bound for the leaked information of the database in theory.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Enhanced No-Go Theorem for Quantum Position Verification

Based on the instantaneous nonlocal quantum computation (INQC), Buhrman et al. proposed an excellent attack strategy to quantum position verification (QPV) protocols in 2011, and showed that, if the colluding adversaries are allowed to previously share unlimited entangled states, it is impossible to design an unconditionally secure QPV protocol in the previous model. Here, trying to overcome this no-go theorem, we find some assumptions in the INQC attack, which are implicit but essential for the success of this attack, and present three different QPV protocols where these assumptions are not satisfied. We show that for the general adversaries, who execute the attack operations at every common time slot or the time when they detect the arrival of the challenge signals from the verifiers, secure QPV is achievable. This implies practically secure QPV can be obtained even if the adversaries is allowed to share unlimited entanglement previously. Here by "practically" we mean that in a successful attack the adversaries need launch a new round of attack on the coming qubits with extremely high frequency so that none of the possible qubits, which may be sent at random time, will be missed. On the other side, using such Superdense INQC (SINQC) attack, the adversaries can still attack the proposed protocols successfully in theory. The particular attack strategies to our protocols are presented respectively. On this basis, we demonstrate the impossibility of secure QPV with looser assumptions, i.e. the enhanced no-go theorem for QPV.Comment: 19 pages, single column, 3 tables, 6 figure

Quantum algorithm for association rules mining

Association rules mining (ARM) is one of the most important problems in knowledge discovery and data mining. Given a transaction database that has a large number of transactions and items, the task of ARM is to acquire consumption habits of customers by discovering the relationships between itemsets (sets of items). In this paper, we address ARM in the quantum settings and propose a quantum algorithm for the key part of ARM, finding out frequent itemsets from the candidate itemsets and acquiring their supports. Specifically, for the case in which there are $M_f^{(k)}$ frequent $k$-itemsets in the $M_c^{(k)}$ candidate $k$-itemsets ($M_f^{(k)} \leq M_c^{(k)}$), our algorithm can efficiently mine these frequent $k$-itemsets and estimate their supports by using parallel amplitude estimation and amplitude amplification with complexity $\mathcal{O}(\frac{k\sqrt{M_c^{(k)}M_f^{(k)}}}{\epsilon})$, where $\epsilon$ is the error for estimating the supports. Compared with the classical counterpart, classical sampling-based algorithm, whose complexity is $\mathcal{O}(\frac{kM_c^{(k)}}{\epsilon^2})$, our quantum algorithm quadratically improves the dependence on both $\epsilon$ and $M_c^{(k)}$ in the best case when $M_f^{(k)}\ll M_c^{(k)}$ and on $\epsilon$ alone in the worst case when $M_f^{(k)}\approx M_c^{(k)}$.Comment: 8 page

Cryptanalysis of a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol with single particles

Recently, Sun et al. [Quant Inf Proc DOI: 10.1007/s11128-013-0569-x] presented an efficient multi-party quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol by employing single particles and unitary operations. The aim of this protocol is to fairly and securely negotiate a secret session key among $N$ parties with a high qubit efficiency. In addition, the authors claimed that no participant can learn anything more than his/her prescribed output in this protocol, i.e., the sub-secret keys of the participants can be kept secret during the protocol. However, here we points out that the sub-secret of a participant in Sun et al.'s protocol can be eavesdropped by the two participants next to him/her. In addition, a certain number of dishonest participants can fully determine the final shared key in this protocol. Finally, we discuss the factors that should be considered when designing a really fair and secure QKA protocol.Comment: 7 page