A quantum encryption scheme (also called private quantum channel, or state
randomization protocol) is a one-time pad for quantum messages. If two parties
share a classical random string, one of them can transmit a quantum state to
the other so that an eavesdropper gets little or no information about the state
being transmitted. Perfect encryption schemes leak no information at all about
the message. Approximate encryption schemes leak a non-zero (though small)
amount of information but require a shorter shared random key. Approximate
schemes with short keys have been shown to have a number of applications in
quantum cryptography and information theory.
This paper provides the first deterministic, polynomial-time constructions of
quantum approximate encryption schemes with short keys. Previous constructions
(quant-ph/0307104) are probabilistic--that is, they show that if the operators
used for encryption are chosen at random, then with high probability the
resulting protocol will be a secure encryption scheme. Moreover, the resulting
protocol descriptions are exponentially long. Our protocols use keys of the
same length as (or better length than) the probabilistic constructions; to
encrypt n qubits approximately, one needs n+o(n) bits of shared key.
An additional contribution of this paper is a connection between classical
combinatorial derandomization and constructions of pseudo-random matrix
families in a continuous space.Comment: 11 pages, no figures. In Proceedings of RANDOM 2004, Cambridge, MA,
August 200
