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Frédéric Dupuis

Publications and source records attributed to Frédéric Dupuis.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Proving security of BB84 under source correlations

Device imperfections and memory effects can result in undesired correlations among the states generated by a realistic quantum source. These correlations are called source correlations. Proving the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols in the presence of these correlations has been a persistent challenge. We present a simple and general method to reduce the security proof of the BB84 protocol with source correlations to one with an almost perfect source, for which security can be proven using previously known techniques. For this purpose, we introduce a simple source test, which randomly tests the output of the QKD source and provides a bound on the source correlations. We then use the recently proven entropic triangle inequality for the smooth min-entropy to carry out the reduction to the protocol with the almost perfect source.

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arXiv2025

Security proof for parallel DIQKD

We present a parallel device independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) protocol based on the CHSH game and prove its security. Using techniques developed for analysing the parallel repetition of anchored non-local games, we show that the answers on a small random linear subset of the games in the DIQKD protocol can be simulated as the output of a single-round strategy for playing the CHSH game. Then, we use the recently developed unstructured approximate entropy accumulation theorem to establish the smooth min-entropy lower bound required for the security proof. Our approach yields a more information-theoretic and general proof for parallel DIQKD compared to previous proofs.

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arXiv2025

Chain rules for quantum Rényi entropies

We present chain rules for a new definition of the quantum Rényi conditional entropy sometimes called the "sandwiched" Rényi conditional entropy. More precisely, we prove analogues of the equation $H(AB|C) = H(A|BC) + H(B|C)$, which holds as an identity for the von Neumann conditional entropy. In the case of the Rényi entropy, this relation no longer holds as an equality, but survives as an inequality of the form $H_α(AB|C) \geqslant H_β(A|BC) + H_γ(B|C)$, where the parameters $α, β, γ$ obey the relation $\fracα{α-1} = \fracβ{β-1} + \fracγ{γ-1}$ and $(α-1)(β-1)(γ-1) > 0$; if $(α-1)(β-1)(γ-1) < 0$, the direction of the inequality is reversed.

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arXiv2024

Universal chain rules from entropic triangle inequalities

The von Neumann entropy of an $n$-partite system $A_1^n$ given a system $B$ can be written as the sum of the von Neumann entropies of the individual subsystems $A_k$ given $A_1^{k-1}$ and $B$. While it is known that such a chain rule does not hold for the smooth min-entropy, we prove a counterpart of this for a variant of the smooth min-entropy, which is equal to the conventional smooth min-entropy up to a constant. This enables us to lower bound the smooth min-entropy of an $n$-partite system in terms of, roughly speaking, equally strong entropies of the individual subsystems. We call this a universal chain rule for the smooth min-entropy, since it is applicable for all values of $n$. Using duality, we also derive a similar relation for the smooth max-entropy. Our proof utilises the entropic triangle inequalities for analysing approximation chains. Additionally, we also prove an approximate version of the entropy accumulation theorem, which significantly relaxes the conditions required on the state to bound its smooth min-entropy. In particular, it does not require the state to be produced through a sequential process like previous entropy accumulation type bounds. In our upcoming companion paper, we use it to prove the security of parallel device independent quantum key distribution.

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arXiv2024

Fiat-Shamir for Proofs Lacks a Proof Even in the Presence of Shared Entanglement

We explore the cryptographic power of arbitrary shared physical resources. The most general such resource is access to a fresh entangled quantum state at the outset of each protocol execution. We call this the Common Reference Quantum State (CRQS) model, in analogy to the well-known Common Reference String (CRS). The CRQS model is a natural generalization of the CRS model but appears to be more powerful: in the two-party setting, a CRQS can sometimes exhibit properties associated with a Random Oracle queried once by measuring a maximally entangled state in one of many mutually unbiased bases. We formalize this notion as a Weak One-Time Random Oracle (WOTRO), where we only ask of the $m$-bit output to have some randomness when conditioned on the $n$-bit input. We show that when $n-m\inω(\lg n)$, any protocol for WOTRO in the CRQS model can be attacked by an (inefficient) adversary. Moreover, our adversary is efficiently simulatable, which rules out the possibility of proving the computational security of a scheme by a fully black-box reduction to a cryptographic game assumption. On the other hand, we introduce a non-game quantum assumption for hash functions that implies WOTRO in the CRQS model (where the CRQS consists only of EPR pairs). We first build a statistically secure WOTRO protocol where $m=n$, then hash the output. The impossibility of WOTRO has the following consequences. First, we show the fully-black-box impossibility of a quantum Fiat-Shamir transform, extending the impossibility result of Bitansky et al. (TCC 2013) to the CRQS model. Second, we show a fully-black-box impossibility result for a strenghtened version of quantum lightning (Zhandry, Eurocrypt 2019) where quantum bolts have an additional parameter that cannot be changed without generating new bolts. Our results also apply to $2$-message protocols in the plain model.

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arXiv2024

Joint State-Channel Decoupling and One-Shot Quantum Coding Theorem

In this work, we consider decoupling a bipartite quantum state via a general quantum channel. We propose a joint state-channel decoupling approach to obtain a one-shot error exponent bound without smoothing, in which trace distance is used to measure how good the decoupling is. The established exponent is expressed in terms of a sum of two sandwiched R{é}nyi entropies, one quantifying the amount of initial correlation between the state and environment, while the other characterizing the effectiveness of the quantum channel. This gives an explicit exponential decay of the decoupling error in the whole achievable region, which was missing in the previous results [Commun. Math. Phys. 328, 2014]. Moreover, it strengthens the error exponent bound obtained in a recent work [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 69(12), 2023], for exponent from the channel part. As an application, we establish a one-shot error exponent bound for quantum channel coding given by a sandwiched Rényi coherent information.

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arXiv2024

Smooth min-entropy lower bounds for approximation chains

For a state $ρ_{A_1^n B}$, we call a sequence of states $(σ_{A_1^k B}^{(k)})_{k=1}^n$ an approximation chain if for every $1 \leq k \leq n$, $ρ_{A_1^k B} \approx_εσ_{A_1^k B}^{(k)}$. In general, it is not possible to lower bound the smooth min-entropy of such a $ρ_{A_1^n B}$, in terms of the entropies of $σ_{A_1^k B}^{(k)}$ without incurring very large penalty factors. In this paper, we study such approximation chains under additional assumptions. We begin by proving a simple entropic triangle inequality, which allows us to bound the smooth min-entropy of a state in terms of the Rényi entropy of an arbitrary auxiliary state while taking into account the smooth max-relative entropy between the two. Using this triangle inequality, we create lower bounds for the smooth min-entropy of a state in terms of the entropies of its approximation chain in various scenarios. In particular, utilising this approach, we prove approximate versions of the asymptotic equipartition property and entropy accumulation. In our companion paper, we show that the techniques developed in this paper can be used to prove the security of quantum key distribution in the presence of source correlations.

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arXiv2022

Formalized functional analysis with semilinear maps

Semilinear maps are a generalization of linear maps between vector spaces where we allow the scalar action to be twisted by a ring homomorphism such as complex conjugation. In particular, this generalization unifies the concepts of linear and conjugate-linear maps. We implement this generalization in Lean's \textsf{mathlib} library, along with a number of important results in functional analysis which previously were impossible to formalize properly. Specifically, we prove the Fréchet--Riesz representation theorem and the spectral theorem for compact self-adjoint operators generically over real and complex Hilbert spaces. We also show that semilinear maps have applications beyond functional analysis by formalizing the one-dimensional case of a theorem of Dieudonné and Manin that classifies the isocrystals over an algebraically closed field with positive characteristic.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2022

Privacy amplification and decoupling without smoothing

We prove an achievability result for privacy amplification and decoupling in terms of the sandwiched Rényi entropy of order $α\in (1,2]$; this extends previous results which worked for $α=2$. The fact that this proof works for $α$ close to 1 means that we can bypass the smooth min-entropy in the many applications where the bound comes from the fully quantum AEP or entropy accumulation, and carry out the whole proof using the Rényi entropy, thereby easily obtaining an error exponent for the final task. This effectively replaces smoothing, which is a difficult high-dimensional optimization problem, by an optimization problem over a single real parameter $α$.

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arXiv2021

Polarization of Quantum Channels using Clifford-based Channel Combining

We provide a purely quantum version of polar codes, achieving the symmetric coherent information of any qubit-input quantum channel. Our scheme relies on a recursive channel combining and splitting construction, where a two-qubit gate randomly chosen from the Clifford group is used to combine two single-qubit channels. The inputs to the synthesized bad channels are frozen by preshared EPR pairs between the sender and the receiver, so our scheme is entanglement assisted. We further show that quantum polarization can be achieved by choosing the channel combining Clifford operator randomly, from a much smaller subset of only nine two-qubit Clifford gates. Subsequently, we show that a Pauli channel polarizes if and only if a specific classical channel over a four-symbol input set polarizes. We exploit this equivalence to prove fast polarization for Pauli channels, and to devise an efficient successive cancellation based decoding algorithm for such channels. Finally, we present a code construction based on chaining several quantum polar codes, which is shown to require a rate of preshared entanglement that vanishes asymptotically.

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arXiv2019

Entropy accumulation with improved second-order term

The entropy accumulation theorem states that the smooth min-entropy of an $n$-partite system $A = (A_1, \ldots, A_n)$ is lower-bounded by the sum of the von Neumann entropies of suitably chosen conditional states up to corrections that are sublinear in $n$. This theorem is particularly suited to proving the security of quantum cryptographic protocols, and in particular so-called device-independent protocols for randomness expansion and key distribution, where the devices can be built and preprogrammed by a malicious supplier. However, while the bounds provided by this theorem are optimal in the first order, the second-order term is bounded more crudely, in such a way that the bounds deteriorate significantly when the theorem is applied directly to protocols where parameter estimation is done by sampling a small fraction of the positions, as is done in most QKD protocols. The objective of this paper is to improve this second-order sublinear term and remedy this problem. On the way, we prove various bounds on the divergence variance, which might be of independent interest.

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arXiv2018

Secure certification of mixed quantum states with application to two-party randomness generation

We investigate sampling procedures that certify that an arbitrary quantum state on $n$ subsystems is close to an ideal mixed state $φ^{\otimes n}$ for a given reference state $φ$, up to errors on a few positions. This task makes no sense classically: it would correspond to certifying that a given bitstring was generated according to some desired probability distribution. However, in the quantum case, this is possible if one has access to a prover who can supply a purification of the mixed state. In this work, we introduce the concept of mixed-state certification, and we show that a natural sampling protocol offers secure certification in the presence of a possibly dishonest prover: if the verifier accepts then he can be almost certain that the state in question has been correctly prepared, up to a small number of errors. We then apply this result to two-party quantum coin-tossing. Given that strong coin tossing is impossible, it is natural to ask "how close can we get". This question has been well studied and is nowadays well understood from the perspective of the bias of individual coin tosses. We approach and answer this question from a different---and somewhat orthogonal---perspective, where we do not look at individual coin tosses but at the global entropy instead. We show how two distrusting parties can produce a common high-entropy source, where the entropy is an arbitrarily small fraction below the maximum (except with negligible probability).

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arXiv2016

Adaptive Versus Non-Adaptive Strategies in the Quantum Setting with Applications

We prove a general relation between adaptive and non-adaptive strategies in the quantum setting, i.e., between strategies where the adversary can or cannot adaptively base its action on some auxiliary quantum side information. Our relation holds in a very general setting, and is applicable as long as we can control the bit-size of the side information, or, more generally, its "information content". Since adaptivity is notoriously difficult to handle in the analysis of (quantum) cryptographic protocols, this gives us a very powerful tool: as long as we have enough control over the side information, it is sufficient to restrict ourselves to non-adaptive attacks. We demonstrate the usefulness of this methodology with two examples. The first is a quantum bit commitment scheme based on 1-bit cut-and-choose. Since bit commitment implies oblivious transfer (in the quantum setting), and oblivious transfer is universal for two-party computation, this implies the universality of 1-bit cut-and-choose, and thus solves the main open problem of [FKSZZ13]. The second example is a quantum bit commitment scheme proposed in 1993 by Brassard et al. It was originally suggested as an unconditionally secure scheme, back when this was thought to be possible. We partly restore the scheme by proving it secure in (a variant of) the bounded quantum storage model. In both examples, the fact that the adversary holds quantum side information obstructs a direct analysis of the scheme, and we circumvent it by analyzing a non-adaptive version, which can be done by means of known techniques, and applying our main result.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2016

Catalytic Decoupling of Quantum Information

The decoupling technique is a fundamental tool in quantum information theory with applications ranging from quantum thermodynamics to quantum many body physics to the study of black hole radiation. In this work we introduce the notion of catalytic decoupling, that is, decoupling in the presence of an uncorrelated ancilla system. This removes a restriction on the standard notion of decoupling, which becomes important for structureless resources, and yields a tight characterization in terms of the max-mutual information. Catalytic decoupling naturally unifies various tasks like the erasure of correlations and quantum state merging, and leads to a resource theory of decoupling.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2016

Swiveled Rényi entropies

This paper introduces "swiveled Renyi entropies" as an alternative to the Renyi entropic quantities put forward in [Berta et al., Phys. Rev. A 91, 022333 (2015)]. What distinguishes the swiveled Renyi entropies from the prior proposal of Berta et al. is that there is an extra degree of freedom: an optimization over unitary rotations with respect to particular fixed bases (swivels). A consequence of this extra degree of freedom is that the swiveled Renyi entropies are ordered, which is an important property of the Renyi family of entropies. The swiveled Renyi entropies are however generally discontinuous at $α=1$ and do not converge to the von Neumann entropy-based measures in the limit as $α\rightarrow1$, instead bounding them from above and below. Particular variants reduce to known Renyi entropies, such as the Renyi relative entropy or the sandwiched Renyi relative entropy, but also lead to ordered Renyi conditional mutual informations and ordered Renyi generalizations of a relative entropy difference. Refinements of entropy inequalities such as monotonicity of quantum relative entropy and strong subadditivity follow as a consequence of the aforementioned properties of the swiveled Renyi entropies. Due to the lack of convergence at $α=1$, it is unclear whether the swiveled Renyi entropies would be useful in one-shot information theory, so that the present contribution represents partial progress toward this goal.

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arXiv2015

Efficient Quantum Polar Codes Requiring No Preshared Entanglement

We construct an explicit quantum coding scheme which achieves a communication rate not less than the coherent information when used to transmit quantum information over a noisy quantum channel. For Pauli and erasure channels we also present efficient encoding and decoding algorithms for this communication scheme based on polar codes (essentially linear in the blocklength), but which do not require the sender and receiver to share any entanglement before the protocol begins. Due to the existence of degeneracies in the involved error-correcting codes it is indeed possible that the rate of the scheme exceeds the coherent information. We provide a simple criterion which indicates such performance. Finally we discuss how the scheme can be used for secret key distillation as well as private channel coding.

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arXiv2015

The Minimal Work Cost of Information Processing

Irreversible information processing cannot be carried out without some inevitable thermodynamical work cost. This fundamental restriction, known as Landauer's principle, is increasingly relevant today, as the energy dissipation of computing devices impedes the development of their performance. Here we determine the minimal work required to carry out any logical process, for instance a computation. It is given by the entropy of the discarded information conditional to the output of the computation. Our formula takes precisely into account the statistically fluctuating work requirement of the logical process. It enables the explicit calculation of practical scenarios, such as computational circuits or quantum measurements. On the conceptual level, our result gives a precise and operationally justified connection between thermodynamic and information entropy, and explains the emergence of the entropy state function in macroscopic thermodynamics.

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