This paper has been withdrawn by the authors,because the proposed protocol is still coverd by the no-go theorem of Mayers, Lo and Chau. We thank H-K. Lo and HF Chau for helpful correspondences.
This article describes a quantum bit commitment protocol, QBC1, based on entanglement destruction via forced measurements and proves its unconditional security.
This article describes a quantum bit commitment protocol, QBC3, based on entanglement destruction via forced measurements and proves its unconditional security. Some comments on the current status of the field are also made.
The ``impossibility proof'' on unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is critically analyzed. Many possibilities for obtaining a secure bit commitment protocol are indicated, purely on the basis of two-way quantum communications, which are not covered by the impossibility proof formulation. They are classified under six new types of protocols, with security proofs for specific examples on four types. Reasons for some previously failed attempts at obtaining secure protocols are also indicated.
The ``impossibility proof'' on unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is examined. It is shown that the possibility of juxtaposing quantum and classical randomness has not been properly taken into account. A specific protocol that beats entanglement cheating with entanglement is proven to be unconditionally secure.
A new cryptographic tool, anonymous quantum key technique, is introduced that leads to unconditionally secure key distribution and encryption schemes that can be readily implemented experimentally in a realistic environment. If quantum memory is available, the technique would have many features of public-key cryptography; an identification protocol that does not require a shared secret key is provided as an illustration. The possibility is also indicated for obtaining unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment protocols with this technique.
It is generally believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment (QBC) is proven impossible by a "no-go theorem". We point out that the theorem only establishes the existence of a cheating unitary transformation in any QBC scheme secure against the receiver, but this fact alone is not sufficient to rule out unconditionally secure QBC as a matter of principle, because there exists no proof that the cheating unitary transformation must be known to the cheater in all possible cases. In this work, we show how to circumvent the "no-go theorem" and prove that unconditionally secure QBC is…
By using local quantum teleportation of a fixed state to one qubit of an entangled pair sent from the other party, it is shown how one party can commit a bit with only classical information as evidence that results in an unconditionally secure protocol. The well-known ``impossibility proof'' does not cover such protocols due to its different commitment and opening prescriptions, which necessitate actual quantum measurements among different possible systems that cannot be entangled as a consequence.
Using a neutron double-slit setup, we construct a quantum bit commitment scheme in which time development of quantum states plays an essential role. Our scheme evades the widely accepted no-go theorem by the fact that it is neither possible to stop the time evolution of spreading wave packets, nor is it possible to evolve them backward in time. Moreover, for unstable particles such as neutrons, one cannot delay detecting their positions indefinitely, or they would disintegrate spontaneously and escape detection. We find that using non-stationary states instead of stationary ones, unconditional…
The claim of quantum cryptography has always been that it can provide protocols that are unconditionally secure, that is, for which the security does not depend on any restriction on the time, space or technology available to the cheaters. We show that this claim does not hold for any quantum bit commitment protocol. Since many cryptographic tasks use bit commitment as a basic primitive, this result implies a severe setback for quantum cryptography. The model used encompasses all reasonable implementations of quantum bit commitment protocols in which the participants have not met before, inclu…
Bit commitment involves the submission of evidence from one party to another so that the evidence can be used to confirm a later revealed bit value by the first party, while the second party cannot determine the bit value from the evidence alone. It is widely believed that secure quantum bit commitment is impossible due to quantum entanglement cheating, which is codified in a general impossibility theorem. In this paper, the scope of this general impossibility proof is extended and analyzed, and gaps are found. Three specific protocols are described for which the entanglement cheating as given…
A new commitment scheme based on position-verification and non-local quantum correlations is presented here for the first time in literature. The only credential for unconditional security is the position of committer and non-local correlations generated; neither receiver has any pre-shared data with the committer nor does receiver require trusted and authenticated quantum/classical channels between him and the committer. In the proposed scheme, receiver trusts the commitment only if the scheme itself verifies position of the committer and validates her commitment through non-local quantum cor…
A new relativistic quantum protocol is proposed allowing to implement the bit commitment scheme. The protocol is based on the idea that in the relativistic case the field propagation to the region of space accessible to measurement requires, contrary to the non-relativistic case, a finite non-zero time which depends on the structure of the particular state of the field. In principle, the secret bit can be stored for arbitrarily long time with the probability arbitrarily close to unit.
We propose a new classical bit commitment protocol using the relativistic constraint that signals cannot travel faster than the speed of light $c$. This protocol is unconditionally secure against both classical or quantum attacks. The sender (Alice) and the receiver (Bob) each controls two secure stations separated by a large distance $d$, and they communicate by exchanging classical information only. Alice commits by sending from her stations two causally independent encrypted messages to the neighboring Bob's stations, after that the protocol is out of her control and she plays no role in th…
A class of quantum protocols of bit commitment is constructed based on the nonorthogonal states coding and the correlation immunity of some Boolean functions. The binding condition of these protocols is guaranteed mainly by the law of causality and the concealing condition is guaranteed by the indistinguishability between nonorthogonal quantum states and the correlation immunity of Boolean functions. We also give out an oblivious transfer protocol based on two-nonorthogonal states coding and build a bit commitment protocol on top of it. The relationship between these protocols and the well kno…
Bit commitment is a fundamental cryptographic task that guarantees a secure commitment between two mutually mistrustful parties and is a building block for many cryptographic primitives, including coin tossing, zero-knowledge proofs, oblivious transfer and secure two-party computation. Unconditionally secure bit commitment was thought to be impossible until recent theoretical protocols that combine quantum mechanics and relativity were shown to elude previous impossibility proofs. Here we implement such a bit commitment protocol. In the experiment, the committer performs quantum measurements u…
It is shown how the evidence state space in quantum bit commitment may be made to depend on the bit value 0 or 1 with split entangled pairs. As a consequence, one can obtain a protocol that is perfectly concealing, but is also $ε$-binding because the bit-value dependent evidence space prevents the committing party from cheating by means of a local transformation that is independent of the part of evidence state space that has never been in his possession.
Unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment (QBC) was considered impossible. But the no-go proofs are based on the Hughston-Jozsa-Wootters (HJW) theorem (a.k.a. the Uhlmann theorem). Recently it was found that in high-dimensional systems, there exist some states which can display a chaos effect in quantum steering, so that the attack strategy based on the HJW theorem has to require the capability of discriminating quantum states with very subtle difference, to the extent that is not allowed by the uncertainty principle. With the help of this finding, here we propose a simple QBC protocol whi…
The commodity-based cryptography is an alternative approach to realize conventionally impossible cryptographic primitives such as unconditionally secure bit-commitment by consuming pre-established correlation between distrustful participants. A unit of such classical correlation is known as the one-time table (OTT). In this paper, we introduce a new example besides quantum key distribution in which quantum correlation is useful for cryptography. We propose a scheme for unconditionally secure qubit-commitment, a quantum cryptographic primitive forbidden by the recently proven no-masking theorem…
Bit commitment involves the submission of evidence from one party to another so that the evidence can be used to confirm a later revealed bit value by the first party, while the second party cannot determine the bit value from the evidence alone. It is widely believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible due to quantum entanglement cheating, which is codified in a general impossibility theorem. In this paper, the scope of this general impossibility proof is analyzed, and gaps are found. Two variants of a bit commitment scheme utilizing anonymous quantum states and d…
The commitment of bits between two mutually distrustful parties is a powerful cryptographic primitive with which many cryptographic objectives can be achieved. It is widely believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible due to quantum entanglement cheating, which is codified in a general impossibility theorem. Gaps in the proof of this impossibility theorem are found. An unconditionally secure bit commitment protocol utilizing anonymous quantum states and the no-clone theorem is presented below with a full security proof.
We describe a new classical bit commitment protocol based on cryptographic constraints imposed by special relativity. The protocol is unconditionally secure against classical or quantum attacks. It evades the no-go results of Mayers, Lo and Chau by requiring from Alice a sequence of communications, including a post-revelation verification, each of which is guaranteed to be independent of its predecessor.
The desire to obtain an unconditionally secure bit commitment protocol in quantum cryptography was expressed for the first time thirteen years ago. Bit commitment is sufficient in quantum cryptography to realize a variety of applications with unconditional security. In 1993, a quantum bit commitment protocol was proposed together with a security proof. However, a basic flaw in the protocol was discovered by Mayers in 1995 and subsequently by Lo and Chau. Later the result was generalized by Mayers who showed that unconditionally secure bit commitment is impossible. A brief review on quantum bit…
In a secure bit commitment protocol involving only classical physics, A commits either a 0 or a 1 to B. If quantum information is used in the protocol, A may be able to commit a state of the form $α\ket{0} + β\ket{1}$. If so, she can also commit mixed states in which the committed bit is entangled with other quantum states under her control. We introduce here a quantum cryptographic primitive, {\it bit commitment with a certificate of classicality} (BCCC), which differs from standard bit commitment in that it guarantees that the committed state has a fixed classical value. We show that no unco…
We propose a new unconditionally secure bit commitment scheme based on Minkowski causality and the properties of quantum information. The receiving party sends a number of randomly chosen BB84 qubits to the committer at a given point in space-time. The committer carries out measurements in one of the two BB84 bases, depending on the committed bit value, and transmits the outcomes securely at light speed in opposite directions to remote agents. These agents unveil the bit by returning the outcomes to adjacent agents of the receiver. The security proofs rely only on simple properties of quantum …
We present a bit commitment protocol based on quantum nonlocality that seems to bring ever-lasting unconditional security. Although security is not rigorously proved, physical arguments and numerical simulations support this conclusion. The key point is that the proof of the commitment is forced to become classical data uncorrelated with anything else. This allows us to circumvent previous impossibility proofs in which it is assumed that classical data can be replaced by quantum data that may be entangled with the committer. The proposed protocol also recovers two features missing in recent "r…
An unconditionally secure quantum cion tossing protocol for two remote participants via entangled swapping is presented. The security of this protocol is guaranteed by the nonlocal property of quantum entanglement and the classical complexity.
The impossibility proof on unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is critically reviewed. Different ways of obtaining secure protocols are indicated.
We present a quantum-public-key identification protocol and show that it is secure against a computationally-unbounded adversary. This demonstrates for the first time that unconditionally-secure and reusable public-key authentication is possible in principle with (pure-state) public keys.
We demonstrate a weak pulse quantum key distribution system using the BB84 protocol which is secure against all individual attacks, including photon number splitting. By carefully controlling the weak pulse intensity we demonstrate the maximum secure bit rate as a function of the fibre length. Unconditionally secure keys can be formed for standard telecom fibres exceeding 50 km in length.
It is generally believed that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible, due to widespread acceptance of an impossibility proof that utilizes quantum entaglement cheating. In this paper, we delineate how the impossibiliy proof formulation misses various types of quantum bit commitment protocols based on two-way quantum communications. We point out some of the gaps in the impossibility proof reasoning, and present corresponding counterexamples. Four different types of bit commitment protocols are constructed with several new protocol techniques. A specific Type 4 protocol is d…
This paper considers the use an entanglement breaking channel in the construction of a secure bit-commitment protocol. It is shown that this can be done via a depolarizing quantum channel.
Spacetime-constrained oblivious transfer (SCOT) extends the fundamental primitive of oblivious transfer to Minkowski space. SCOT and location oblivious data transfer (LODT) are the only known cryptographic tasks with classical inputs and outputs for which unconditional security needs both quantum theory and relativity. We give an unconditionally secure SCOT protocol that, contrasting previous SCOT and LODT protocols, is practical to implement with current technology, where distant agents need only communicate classical information, while quantum communication occurs at a single location. We al…
Bit commitment (BC) is an important cryptographic primitive for an agent to convince a mutually mistrustful party that she has already made a binding choice of 0 or 1 but only to reveal her choice at a later time. Ideally, a BC protocol should be simple, reliable, easy to implement using existing technologies, and most importantly unconditionally secure in the sense that its security is based on an information-theoretic proof rather than computational complexity assumption or the existence of a trustworthy arbitrator. Here we report such a provably secure scheme involving only one-way classica…
This paper studies secure multiparty quantum computation (SMQC) without nonlocal measurements. Firstly, this task is reduced to secure two-party quantum computation of nonlocal controlled-NOT (NL-CNOT) gate. Then, in the passive adversaries model, the secure computation of NL-CNOT is reduced to bit commitment. Thus, a SMQC scheme can be constructed based on bit commitment. This scheme does not depend on trusted third party, and is secure in the passive adversaries model. It is also pointed out that a vulnerability exists in any secure two-party quantum computation protocol of NL-CNOT gate.
Over decades quantum cryptography has been intensively studied for unconditionally secured data transmission in a quantum regime. Due to the quantum loopholes caused by imperfect single photon detectors and/or lossy quantum channels, however, the quantum cryptography is practically inefficient and even vulnerable to eavesdropping. Here, a method of unconditionally secured key distribution potentially compatible with current fiber-optic communications networks is proposed in a classical regime for high-speed optical backbone networks. The unconditional security is due to the quantum superpositi…
We propose an unconditionally secure quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol, which uses a relatively strong signal pulse. While our protocol shares similar security bases as the Bennett 1992 protocol with a strong reference pulse (B92), our scheme uses a smaller number of detectors and it is robust against Rayleigh scattering in an optical fibre. We derive a lower bound of secret key generation rate of our protocol and show that our protocol can cover relatively long distances, assuming precise phase modulations and stable interferometers.
We report here a complete experimental realization of one-way decoy-pulse quantum key distribution, demonstrating an unconditionally secure key rate of 5.51 kbps for a 25.3 km fibre length. This is two orders of magnitudes higher than the value that can be obtained with a non-decoy system. We introduce also a simple test for detecting the photon number splitting attack and highlight that it is essential for the security of the technique to fully characterize the source and detectors used.
Quantum protocols for bit commitment have been proposed and it is largely accepted that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is not possible; however, it can be more secure than classical bit commitment. In despite of its usefulness, quantum bit commitment protocols have not been experimentally implemented. The main reason is the fact that all proposed quantum bit commitment protocols require quantum memory. In this work, we show a quantum bit commitment protocol that does not require quantum memory and can be implemented with present technology.
Based on the detection loophole-free photon key distribution (PKD) compatible with classical optical systems, an optical key distribution (OKD) protocol is presented for unconditionally secured cryptography in fiber-optic communications networks using addressable continuous phase basis, where each communication channel is composed of paired transmission lines. The unconditional security in OKD lies in quantum superposition between the paired lines of each channel. The continuous phase basis in OKD can be applied for one-time-pad optical cryptography in networks, whose network address capacity …
Long-distance quantum communication requires quantum repeaters to overcome photon loss in optical fibers. Here we demonstrate a repeater node with two memory atoms in an optical cavity. Both atoms are individually and repeatedly entangled with photons that are distributed until each communication partner has independently received one of them. An atomic Bell-state measurement followed by classical communication serves to establish a key. We demonstrate scaling advantage of the key rate, increase the effective attenuation length by a factor of two, and beat the error-rate threshold of 11\% for …
We prove the unconditional security of a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol on a noisy channel against the most general attack allowed by quantum physics. We use the fact that in a previous paper we have reduced the proof of the unconditionally security of this QKD protocol to a proof that a corresponding Quantum String Oblivious Transfer (String-QOT) protocol would be unconditionally secure against Bob if implemented on top of an unconditionally secure bit commitment scheme. We prove a lemma that extends a security proof given by Yao for a (one bit) QOT protocol to this String-QOT protoc…
We introduce relativistic multi-party biased die rolling protocols, generalizing coin flipping to $M \geq 2$ parties and to $N \geq 2$ outcomes for any chosen outcome biases, and show them unconditionally secure. Our results prove that the most general random secure multi-party computation, where all parties receive the output and there is no secret input by any party, can be implemented with unconditional security. Our protocols extend Kent's [A. Kent, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 5382 (1999)] two-party unbiased coin flipping protocol, do not require any quantum communication, are practical to implem…
The relationship between the quantum bit commitment (QBC) and quantum seal (QS) is studied. It is elaborated that QBC and QS are not equivalent, but QS protocols satisfying a stronger unconditional security requirement can lead to an unconditionally secure QBC. In this sense, QS is strictly stronger than QBC in security requirements. Based on an earlier proposal on sealing a single bit, a feasible QBC protocol is also put forward, which is secure in practice even if the cheater has a strong quantum computational power.
We introduce a novel form of decoy-state technique to make the single-photon Bennett 1992 protocol robust against losses and noise of a communication channel. Two uninformative states are prepared by the transmitter in order to prevent the unambiguous state discrimination attack and improve the phase-error rate estimation. The presented method does not require strong reference pulses, additional electronics or extra detectors for its implementation.
In this paper, we prove that the unconditionally secure key can be surprisingly extracted from {\it multi}-photon emission part in the photon polarization-based QKD. One example is shown by explicitly proving that one can indeed generate an unconditionally secure key from Alice's two-photon emission part in ``Quantum cryptography protocols robust against photon number splitting attacks for weak laser pulses implementations'' proposed by V. Scarani {\it et al.,} in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 92}, 057901 (2004), which is called SARG04. This protocol uses the same four states as in BB84 and differs on…
It has been recently shown by Mayers that no bit commitment scheme is secure if the participants have unlimited computational power and technology. However it was noticed that a secure protocol could be obtained by forcing the cheater to perform a measurement. Similar situations had been encountered previously in the design of Quantum Oblivious Transfer. The question is whether a classical bit commitment could be used for this specific purpose. We demonstrate that, surprisingly, classical unconditionally concealing bit commitments do not help.
We prove the unconditional security of the Bennett 1992 protocol, by using a reduction to an entanglement distillation protocol initiated by a local filtering process. The bit errors and the phase errors are correlated after the filtering, and we can bound the amount of phase errors from the observed bit errors by an estimation method involving nonorthogonal measurements. The angle between the two states shows a trade-off between accuracy of the estimation and robustness to noises.