An obfuscator is an algorithm that translates circuits into
functionally-equivalent similarly-sized circuits that are hard to understand.
Efficient obfuscators would have many applications in cryptography. Until
recently, theoretical progress has mainly been limited to no-go results. Recent
works have proposed the first efficient obfuscation algorithms for classical
logic circuits, based on a notion of indistinguishability against
polynomial-time adversaries. In this work, we propose a new notion of
obfuscation, which we call partial-indistinguishability. This notion is based
on computationally universal groups with efficiently computable normal forms,
and appears to be incomparable with existing definitions. We describe universal
gate sets for both classical and quantum computation, in which our definition
of obfuscation can be met by polynomial-time algorithms. We also discuss some
potential applications to testing quantum computers. We stress that the
cryptographic security of these obfuscators, especially when composed with
translation from other gate sets, remains an open question.Comment: 21 pages,Proceedings of TQC 201