This thesis includes a survey of the results known for private and approximate private quantum channels. We develop the best known upper bound for $ε$-randomizing maps, $n+2\log(1/ε)+c$ bits required to $ε$-randomize an arbitrary $n$-qubit state by improving a scheme of Ambainis and Smith \cite{AS04} based on small bias spaces \cite{NN90, AGHP92}. We show by a probabilistic argument that in fact the great majority of random schemes using slightly more than this many bits of key are also $ε$-randomizing. We provide the first known non-trivial lower bound for $ε$-randomizing maps, and develop several conditions on them which we hope may be useful in proving stronger lower bounds in the future.
We prove an upper bound on the private capacity of the single-mode noiseless bosonic wiretap channel. Combined with a previous lower bound, we obtain the low photon-number asymptotic expression for the private capacity. We then show that the multiple-mode noiseless bosonic wiretap channel is equivalent to parallel single-mode channels, hence the single-mode bounds can be applied. Finally, we consider multiple-spatial-mode propagation through atmospheric turbulence, and derive a private-capacity lower bound that only requires second moments of the channel matrix.
We study the power of quantum channels with little or no capacity for private communication. Because privacy is a necessary condition for quantum communication, one might expect that such channels would be of little use for transmitting quantum states. Nevertheless, we find strong evidence that there are pairs of such channels that, when used together, can transmit far more quantum information than the sum of their individual private capacities. Because quantum transmissions are necessarily private, this would imply a large violation of additivity for the private capacity. Specifically, we pre…
We investigate the approximate quantum state sharing protocol based on random unitary channels, which is secure against any exterior or interior attackers in principle. Although the protocol leaks small information for a security parameter $ε$, the scheme still preserves its information-theoretic secrecy, and reduces some pre-shared classical secret keys for a private quantum channel between a sender and two receivers. The approximate private quantum channels constructed via random unitary channels play a crucial role in the proposed quantum state sharing protocol.
We consider using a secret key and a noisy quantum channel to generate noiseless public communication and noiseless private communication. The optimal protocol for this setting is the publicly-enhanced private father protocol. This protocol exploits random coding techniques and "piggybacking" of public information along with secret-key-assisted private codes. The publicly-enhanced private father protocol is a generalization of the secret-key-assisted protocol of Hsieh, Luo, and Brun and a generelization of a protocol for simultaneous communication of public and private information suggested by…
We prove a regularized formula for the secret key-assisted capacity region of a quantum channel for transmitting private classical information. This result parallels the work of Devetak on entanglement assisted quantum communication capacity \cite{DHW05RI}. This formula provides a new family protocol, the private father protocol, under the resource inequality framework that includes private classical communication \it{without} secret key assistance as a child protocol.
Recently, there have been considerable progresses on the bounds of various quantum channel capacities for bosonic Gaussian channels. Especially, several upper bounds for the classical capacity and the quantum capacity on the bosonic Gaussian channels, via a technique known as quantum entropy power inequality, have been shed light on understanding the mysterious quantum-channel-capacity problems. However, upper bounds for the private capacity on quantum channels are still missing for the study on certain universal upper bounds. Here, we derive upper bounds on the private capacity for bosonic Ga…
We study the symmetric-side-channel-assisted private capacity of a quantum channel, for which we provide a single-letter formula. This capacity is additive, convex, and, for degradable channels, equal to the unassisted private capacity. While a channel's (unassisted) capacity for for private classical communication may be strictly larger than its quantum capacity, we will show that these capacities are equal for degradable channels, thus demonstrating the equivalence of privacy and quantum coherence in this context. We use these ideas to find new bounds on the key rate of quantum key distribut…
We addressed the question of optimality of private quantum channels. We have shown that the Shannon entropy of the classical key necessary to securely transfer the quantum information is lower bounded by the entropy exchange of the private quantum channel $\cal E$ and von Neumann entropy of the ciphertext state $\varrho^{(0)}$. Based on these bounds we have shown that decomposition of private quantum channels into orthogonal unitaries (if exists) is optimizing the entropy. For non-ancillary single qubit PQC we have derived the optimal entropy for arbitrary set of plaintexts. In particular, we …
Recently there has been considerable activity on the subject of additivity of various quantum channel capacities. Here, we construct a family of channels with sharply bounded classical, hence private capacity. On the other hand, their quantum capacity when combined with a zero private (and zero quantum) capacity erasure channel, becomes larger than the previous classical capacity. As a consequence, we can conclude for the first time that the classical private capacity is non-additive. In fact, in our construction even the quantum capacity of the tensor product of two channels can be greater th…
The private quantum channel (PQC) maps any quantum state to the maximally mixed state for the discrete as well as the bosonic Gaussian quantum systems, and it has fundamental meaning on the quantum cryptographic tasks and the quantum channel capacity problems. In this paper, we introduce a notion of approximate private quantum channel ($\varepsilon$-PQC) on fermionic Gaussian systems (i.e., $\varepsilon$-FPQC), and construct its explicit form of the fermionic (Gaussian) private quantum channel. First of all, we suggest a general structure for $\varepsilon$-FPQC on the fermionic Gaussian system…
We present upper bounds on the quantum and private capacity of single-mode, phase-insentitive Bosonic Gaussian Channels based on degradable extensions. Our findings are state-of-the-art in the following parameter regions: low temperature and high transmissivity for the thermal attenuator, low temperature for additive Gaussian noise, high temperature and intermediate amplification for the thermal amplifier.
We investigate how a classical private key can be used by two players, connected by an insecure one-way quantum channel, to perform private communication of quantum information. In particular we show that in order to transmit n qubits privately, 2n bits of shared private key are necessary and sufficient. This result may be viewed as the quantum analogue of the classical one-time pad encryption scheme. From the point of view of the eavesdropper, this encryption process can be seen as a randomization of the original state. We thus also obtain strict bounds on the amount of entropy necessary for …
We address the question of existence of private quantum channel for qubits encoded in polarization degrees of freedom of a photon, that remains secure even if multi-photon (instead of single-photon) pulse is emitted. We show that random unitary channel distributed according to SU(2) Haar measure has this property. Further we analyze the qubit unitary k-designs. We show they ensure security if the photons' parity of the source is guaranteed. Otherwise, the qubit unitary k-designs do not guarantee perfect security.
A formula for the capacity of a quantum channel for transmitting private classical information is derived. This is shown to be equal to the capacity of the channel for generating a secret key, and neither capacity is enhanced by forward public classical communication. Motivated by the work of Schumacher and Westmoreland on quantum privacy and quantum coherence, parallels between private classical information and quantum information are exploited to obtain an expression for the capacity of a quantum channel for generating pure bipartite entanglement. The latter implies a new proof of the quantu…
We make an explicit connection between fundamental notions in quantum cryptography and quantum error correction. Error-correcting subsystems (and subspaces) for quantum channels are the key vehicles for contending with noise in physical implementations of quantum information-processing. Private subsystems (and subspaces) for quantum channels play a central role in cryptographic schemes such as quantum secret sharing and private quantum communication. We show that a subsystem is private for a channel precisely when it is correctable for a complementary channel. This result is shown to hold even…
Quantum Private Comparison (QPC) allows us to protect private information during its comparison. In the past various three-party quantum protocols have been proposed that claim to work well under noisy conditions. Here we tackle the problem of QPC under noise. We analyze the EPR-based protocol under depolarizing noise, bit flip and phase flip noise. We show how noise affects the robustness of the EPR-based protocol. We then present a straightforward protocol based on CSS codes to perform QPC which is robust against noise and secure under general attacks.
We study private quantum channels on a single qubit, which encrypt given set of plaintext states $P$. Specifically, we determine all achievable states $ρ^{(0)}$ (average output of encryption) and for each particular set $P$ we determine the entropy of the key necessary and sufficient to encrypt this set. It turns out that single bit of key is sufficient when the set $P$ is two dimensional. However, the necessary and sufficient entropy of the key in case of three dimensional $P$ varies continuously between 1 and 2 bits depending on the state $ρ^{(0)}$. Finally, we derive private quantum channel…
As the quantum analog of the classical one-time pad, the private quantum channel (PQC) plays a fundamental role in the construction of the maximally mixed state (from any input quantum state), which is very useful for studying secure quantum communications and quantum channel capacity problems. However, the undoubted existence of a relation between the geometric shape of regular polytopes and private quantum channels in the higher dimension has not yet been reported. Recently, it was shown that a one-to-one correspondence exists between single-qubit PQCs and three-dimensional regular polytopes…
In this work we study the problem of communication over the quantum wiretap channel. For this channel there are three parties Alice (sender), Bob (legitimate receiver) and Eve (eavesdropper). We obtain upper and lower bounds on the amount of information Alice can communicate to Bob such that Eve gets to know as little information as possible about the transmitted messages. Our bounds are in terms of quantum hypothesis testing divergence and smooth max quantum relative entropy. To obtain our result we prove a one-shot version of the quantum covering lemma along with operator Chernoff bound for …
Upper bounds for private communication over quantum channels can be derived by adopting channel simulation, protocol stretching, and relative entropy of entanglement. All these ingredients have led to single-letter upper bounds to the secret key capacity which can be directly computed over suitable resource states. For bosonic Gaussian channels, the tightest upper bounds have been derived by employing teleportation simulation over asymptotic resource states, namely the asymptotic Choi matrices of these channels. In this work, we adopt a different approach. We show that teleporting over an anal…
While the objective of conventional quantum key distribution (QKD) is to secretly generate and share the classical bits concealed in the form of maximally mixed quantum states, that of private quantum channel (PQC) is to secretly transmit individual quantum states concealed in the form of maximally mixed states using shared one-time pad and it is called Gaussian private quantum channel (GPQC) when the scheme is in the regime of continuous variables. We propose a GPQC enhanced with squeezed coherent states (GPQCwSC), which is a generalization of GPQC with coherent states only (GPQCo) [Phys. Rev…
Private quantum channels are the quantum analogue of the classical one-time pad. Conditional expectations and trace vectors are notions that have been part of operator algebra theory for several decades. We show that the theory of conditional expectations and trace vectors is intimately related to that of private quantum channels. Specifically we give a new geometric characterization of single qubit private quantum channels that relies on trace vectors. We further show that trace vectors completely describe the private states for quantum channels that are themselves conditional expectations. W…
Quantum information theory establishes the ultimate limits on communication and cryptography in terms of channel capacities for various types of information. The private capacity is particularly important because it quantifies achievable rates of quantum key distribution. We study the power of quantum channels with limited private capacity, focusing on channels that dephase in random bases. These display extensive nonadditivity of private capacity: a channel with 2 log d input qubits has a private capacity less than 2, but when used together with a second channel with zero private capacity the…
We consider entanglement-assisted (EA) private communication over a quantum broadcast channel, in which there is a single sender and multiple receivers. We divide the receivers into two sets: the decoding set and the malicious set. The decoding set and the malicious set can either be disjoint or can have a finite intersection. For simplicity, we say that a single party Bob has access to the decoding set and another party Eve has access to the malicious set, and both Eve and Bob have access to the pre-shared entanglement with Alice. The goal of the task is for Alice to communicate classical inf…
We investigate the most general notion of a private quantum code, which involves the encoding of qubits into quantum subsystems and subspaces. We contribute to the structure theory for private quantum codes by deriving testable conditions for private quantum subsystems in terms of Kraus operators for channels; establishing an analogue of the Knill-Laflamme conditions in this setting. For a large class of naturally arising quantum channels, we show that private subsystems can exist even in the absence of private subspaces. In doing so, we also discover the first examples of private subsystems t…
We show that private shared reference frames can be used to perform private quantum and private classical communication over a public quantum channel. Such frames constitute a novel type of private shared correlation (distinct from private classical keys or shared entanglement) useful for cryptography. We present optimally efficient schemes for private quantum and classical communication given a finite number of qubits transmitted over an insecure channel and given a private shared Cartesian frame and/or a private shared reference ordering of the qubits. We show that in this context, it is use…
We prove unconditional security for a quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol based on distilling pbits (twisted ebits) [quant-ph/0309110] from an arbitrary untrusted state that is claimed to contain distillable key. Our main result is that we can verify security using only public communication -- via parameter estimation of the given untrusted state. The technique applies even to bound entangled states, thus extending QKD to the regime where the available quantum channel has zero quantum capacity. We also show how to convert our purification-based QKD schemes to prepare-measure schemes.
The squashed entanglement is a fundamental entanglement measure in quantum information theory, finding application as an upper bound on the distillable secret key or distillable entanglement of a quantum state or a quantum channel. This paper simplifies proofs that the squashed entanglement is an upper bound on distillable key for finite-dimensional quantum systems and solidifies such proofs for infinite-dimensional quantum systems. More specifically, this paper establishes that the logarithm of the dimension of the key system (call it $\log_{2}K$) in an $\varepsilon$-approximate private state…
We realize shamir's no-key protocol via quantum computation of Boolean permutation and private quantum channel. The quantum no-key (QNK) protocol presented here is one with mutual authentications, and proved to be unconditionally secure. An important property of this protocol is that0 its authentication key can be reused permanently.
Private communication via zero-private-capacity quantum channels
QudeLeap Research（量子跃迁研究）；Thrust of Artificial Intelligence, Information Hub,The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州）信息枢纽人工智能组）
We consider the scenario in which Alice transmits private classical messages to Bob via a classical-quantum channel, part of whose output is intercepted by an eavesdropper, Eve. We prove the existence of a universal coding scheme under which Alice's messages can be inferred correctly by Bob, and yet Eve learns nothing about them. The code is universal in the sense that it does not depend on specific knowledge of the channel. Prior knowledge of the probability distribution on the input alphabet of the channel, and bounds on the corresponding Holevo quantities of the output ensembles at Bob's an…
Werner states have a host of interesting properties, which often serve to illuminate the unusual properties of quantum information. Starting from these states, one may define a family of quantum channels, known as the Holevo-Werner channels, which themselves afford several unusual properties. In this paper we use the teleportation covariance of these channels to upper bound their two-way assisted quantum and secret-key capacities. This bound may be expressed in terms of relative entropy distances, such as the relative entropy of entanglement, and also in terms of the squashed entanglement. Mos…
For a partially degradable (PD) channel, the channel output state can be used to simulate the degraded environment state. The quantum capacity of a PD channel has been proven to be additive. Here, we show that the private classical capacity of arbitrary dimensional PD channels is equal to the quantum capacity of the channel and also single-letterizes. We prove that higher rates of private classical communication can be achieved over a PD channel in comparison to standard degradable channels.
The quantum capacity of a quantum channel is always smaller than the capacity of the channel for private communication. However, both quantities are given by the infinite regularization of respectively the coherent and the private information. Here, we construct a family of channels for which the private and coherent information can remain strictly superadditive for unbounded number of uses. We prove this by showing that the coherent information is strictly larger than the private information of a smaller number of uses of the channel. This implies that even though the quantum capacity is uppe…
Privacy lies at the fundament of quantum mechanics. A coherently transmitted quantum state is inherently private. Remarkably, coherent quantum communication is not a prerequisite for privacy: there are quantum channels that are too noisy to transmit any quantum information reliably that can nevertheless send private classical information. Here, we ask how much private classical information a channel can transmit if it has little quantum capacity. We present a class of channels N_d with input dimension d^2, quantum capacity Q(N_d) <= 1, and private capacity P(N_d) = log d. These channels asympt…
In this paper we introduce the concept of quantum private channel within the continuous variables framework (CVPQC) and investigate its properties. In terms of CVPQC we naturally define a "maximally" mixed state in phase space together with its explicit construction and show that for increasing number of encryption operations (which sets the length of a shared key between Alice and Bob) the encrypted state is arbitrarily close to the maximally mixed state in the sense of the Hilbert-Schmidt distance. We bring the exact solution for the distance dependence and give also a rough estimate of the …
This paper addresses and expands on the contents of the recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 030502 (2013)] discussing private quantum subsystems. Here we prove several previously presented results, including a condition for a given random unitary channel to not have a private subspace (although this does not mean that private communication cannot occur, as was previously demonstrated via private subsystems) and algebraic conditions that characterize when a general quantum subsystem or subspace code is private for a quantum channel. These conditions can be regarded as the private analogue of t…
The capacity of classical channels is convex. This is not the case for the quantum capacity of a channel: the capacity of a mixture of different quantum channels exceeds the mixture of the individual capacities and thus is non-convex. Here we show that this effect goes beyond the quantum capacity and holds for the private and classical environment-assisted capacities of quantum channels.
In this article we consider flagged extensions of convex combination of quantum channels, and find general sufficient conditions for the degradability of the flagged extension. An immediate application is a bound on the quantum $Q$ and private $P$ capacities of any channel being a mixture of a unitary map and another channel, with the probability associated to the unitary component being larger than $1/2$. We then specialize our sufficient conditions to flagged Pauli channels, obtaining a family of upper bounds on quantum and private capacities of Pauli channels. In particular, we establish ne…
Two new classes of quantum channels, which we call more capable and less noisy, are introduced. The more capable class consists of channels such that the quantum capacities of the complementary channels to the environments are zero. The less noisy class consists of channels such that the private capacities of the complementary channels to the environment are zero. For the more capable class, it is clarified that the private capacity and quantum capacity coincide. For the less noisy class, it is clarified that the private capacity and quantum capacity can be single letter characterized.
This paper establishes several converse bounds on the private transmission capabilities of a quantum channel. The main conceptual development builds firmly on the notion of a private state, which is a powerful, uniquely quantum method for simplifying the tripartite picture of privacy involving local operations and public classical communication to a bipartite picture of quantum privacy involving local operations and classical communication. This approach has previously led to some of the strongest upper bounds on secret key rates, including the squashed entanglement and the relative entropy of…
In this work we design a specific simulation tool for quantum channels which is based on the use of a control system. This allows us to simulate an average quantum channel which is expressed in terms of an ensemble of channels, even when these channel-components are not jointly teleportation-covariant. This design is also extended to asymptotic simulations, continuous ensembles, and memory channels. As an application, we derive relative-entropy-of-entanglement upper bounds for private communication over various channels, including non-Gaussian mixtures of bosonic lossy channels. Among other re…
We define a new phenomenon for communication over noisy quantum channels. The investigated solution is called polaractivation and based on quantum polar encoding. Polaractivation is a natural consequence of the channel polarization effect in quantum systems and makes possible to open the hidden capacity regions of a noisy quantum channel by using the idea of rate increment. While in case of a classical channel only the rate of classical communication can be increased, in case of a quantum channel the channel polarization and the rate improvement can be exploited to open unreachable capacity re…
Collins and Popescu realized a powerful analogy between several resources in classical and quantum information theory. The Collins-Popescu analogy states that public classical communication, private classical communication, and secret key interact with one another somewhat similarly to the way that classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement interact. This paper discusses the information-theoretic treatment of this analogy for the case of noisy quantum channels. We determine a capacity region for a quantum channel interacting with the noiseless resources of public classica…
Complete security proofs for quantum communication protocols can be notoriously involved, which convolutes their verification, and obfuscates the key physical insights the security finally relies on. In such cases, for the majority of the community, the utility of such proofs may be restricted. Here we provide a simple proof of confidentiality for parallel quantum channels established via entanglement distillation based on hashing, in the presence of noise, and a malicious eavesdropper who is restricted only by the laws of quantum mechanics. The direct contribution lies in improving the linear…
In the vein of the recent "pretty strong" converse for the quantum and private capacity of degradable quantum channels [Morgan/Winter, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 60(1):317-333, 2014], we use the same techniques, in particular the calculus of min-entropies, to show a pretty strong converse for the private capacity of degraded classical-quantum-quantum (cqq-)wiretap channels, which generalize Wyner's model of the degraded classical wiretap channel. While the result is not completely tight, leaving some gap between the region of error and privacy parameters for which the converse bound holds, and a …
In this paper, two fault tolerant channel-encrypting quantum dialogue (QD) protocols against collective noise are presented. One is against collective-dephasing noise, while the other is against collective-rotation noise. The decoherent-free states, each of which is composed of two physical qubits, act as traveling states combating collective noise. Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs, which play the role of private quantum key, are securely shared between two participants over a collective-noise channel in advance. Through encryption and decryption with private quantum key, the initial state of eac…
A quantum cryptographic protocol based in public key cryptography combinations and private key cryptography is presented. Unlike the BB84 protocol [1] and its many variants [2,3] two quantum channels are used. The present research does not make reconciliation mechanisms of information to derive the key. A three related system of key distribution are described.
The classical-input quantum-output (cq) wiretap channel is a communication model involving a classical sender $X$, a legitimate quantum receiver $B$, and a quantum eavesdropper $E$. The goal of a private communication protocol that uses such a channel is for the sender $X$ to transmit a message in such a way that the legitimate receiver $B$ can decode it reliably, while the eavesdropper $E$ learns essentially nothing about which message was transmitted. The $\varepsilon $-one-shot private capacity of a cq wiretap channel is equal to the maximum number of bits that can be transmitted over the c…
We give a brief introduction to private quantum codes, a basic notion in quantum cryptography and key distribution. Private code states are characterized by indistinguishability of their output states under the action of a quantum channel, and we show that higher rank numerical ranges can be used to describe them. We also show how this description arises naturally via conjugate channels and the bridge between quantum error correction and cryptography.
Shannon in celebrated works had shown that n bits of shared key is necessary and sufficient to transmit n-bit classical information in an information-theoretically secure way. Ambainis, Mosca, Tapp and de Wolf in quant-ph/0003101 considered a more general setting, referred to as Private quantum channels, in which instead of classical information, quantum states are required to be transmitted and only one-way communication is allowed. They show that in this case 2n bits of shared key is necessary and sufficient to transmit an n-qubit state. We consider the most general setting in which we allow…
