arXiv subjects

Lawrence M. Ioannou

Publications and source records attributed to Lawrence M. Ioannou.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2011

A new spin on quantum cryptography: Avoiding trapdoors and embracing public keys

We give new arguments in support of \emph{signed quantum key establishment}, where quantum cryptography is used in a public-key infrastructure that provides the required authentication. We also analyze more thoroughly than previous works the benefits that quantum key establishment protocols have over certain classical protocols, motivated in part by the various objections to quantum key establishment that are sometimes raised. Previous knowledge of quantum cryptography on the reader's part is not required for this article, as the definition of "quantum key establishment" that we use is an entirely classical and black-box characterization (one need only trust that protocols satisfying the definition exist).

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arXiv2011

Public-key cryptography based on bounded quantum reference frames

We demonstrate that the framework of bounded quantum reference frames has application to building quantum-public-key cryptographic protocols and proving their security. Thus, the framework we introduce can be seen as a public-key analogue of the framework of Bartlett et al. (Phys. Rev. A 70, 032307), where a private shared reference frame is shown to have cryptographic application. The protocol we present in this paper is an identification scheme, which, like a digital signature scheme, is a type of authentication scheme. We prove that our protocol is both reusable and secure under the honest-verifier assumption. Thus, we also demonstrate that secure reusable quantum-public-key authentication is possible to some extent.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Unconditionally-secure and reusable public-key authentication

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.

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arXiv2010

Universal quantum computation in a hidden basis

Let $\ket{\0}$ and $\ket{\1}$ be two states that are promised to come from known subsets of orthogonal subspaces, but are otherwise unknown. Our paper probes the question of what can be achieved with respect to the basis $\{\ket{\0},\ket{\1}}^{\otimes n}$ of $n$ logical qubits, given only a few copies of the unknown states $\ket{\0}$ and $\ket{\1}$. A phase-invariant operator is one that is unchanged under the relative phase-shift $\ket{\1} \mapsto e^{i θ}\ket{\1}$, for any $θ$, of all of the $n$ qubits. We show that phase-invariant unitary operators can be implemented exactly with no copies and that phase-invariant states can be prepared exactly with at most $n$ copies each of $\ket{\0}$ and $\ket{\1}$; we give an explicit algorithm for state preparation that is efficient for some classes of states (e.g. symmetric states). We conjecture that certain non-phase-invariant operations are impossible to perform accurately without many copies. Motivated by optical implementations of quantum computers, we define ``quantum computation in a hidden basis'' to mean executing a quantum algorithm with respect to the phase-shifted hidden basis $\{\ket{\0}, e^{iθ}\ket{\1}\}$, for some potentially unknown $θ$; we give an efficient approximation algorithm for this task, for which we introduce an analogue of a coherent state of light, which serves as a bounded quantum phase reference frame encoding $θ$. Our motivation was quantum-public-key cryptography, however the techniques are general. We apply our results to quantum-public-key authentication protocols, by showing that a natural class of digital signature schemes for classical messages is insecure. We also give a protocol for identification that uses many of the ideas discussed and whose security relates to our conjecture (but we do not know if it is secure).

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arXiv2009

Deterministic quantum-public-key encryption: forward search attack and randomization

In the classical setting, public-key encryption requires randomness in order to be secure against a forward search attack, whereby an adversary compares the encryption of a guess of the secret message with that of the actual secret message. We show that this is also true in the information-theoretic setting -- where the public keys are quantum systems -- by defining and giving an example of a forward search attack for any deterministic quantum-public-key bit-encryption scheme. However, unlike in the classical setting, we show that any such deterministic scheme can be used as a black box to build a randomized bit-encryption scheme that is no longer susceptible to this attack.

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arXiv2008

Limitations of some simple adiabatic quantum algorithms

Let $H(t)=(1-t/T)H_0 + (t/T)H_1$, $t\in [0,T]$, be the Hamiltonian governing an adiabatic quantum algorithm, where $H_0$ is diagonal in the Hadamard basis and $H_1$ is diagonal in the computational basis. We prove that $H_0$ and $H_1$ must each have at least two large mutually-orthogonal eigenspaces if the algorithm's running time is to be subexponential in the number of qubits. We also reproduce the optimality proof of Farhi and Gutmann's search algorithm in the context of this adiabatic scheme; because we only consider initial Hamiltonians that are diagonal in the Hadamard basis, our result is slightly stronger than the original.

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arXiv2007

Computational complexity of the quantum separability problem

Ever since entanglement was identified as a computational and cryptographic resource, researchers have sought efficient ways to tell whether a given density matrix represents an unentangled, or separable, state. This paper gives the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of this (bipartite) quantum separability problem, focusing on its deterministic (as opposed to randomized) computational complexity. First, I review the one-sided tests for separability, paying particular attention to the semidefinite programming methods. Then, I discuss various ways of formulating the quantum separability problem, from exact to approximate formulations, the latter of which are the paper's main focus. I then give a thorough treatment of the problem's relationship with the complexity classes NP, NP-complete, and co-NP. I also discuss extensions of Gurvits' NP-hardness result to strong NP-hardness of certain related problems. A major open question is whether the NP-contained formulation (QSEP) of the quantum separability problem is Karp-NP-complete; QSEP may be the first natural example of a problem that is Turing-NP-complete but not Karp-NP-complete. Finally, I survey all the proposed (deterministic) algorithms for the quantum separability problem, including the bounded search for symmetric extensions (via semidefinite programming), based on the recent quantum de Finetti theorem; and the entanglement-witness search (via interior-point algorithms and global optimization). These two algorithms have the lowest complexity, with the latter being the best under advice of asymptotically optimal point-coverings of the sphere.

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arXiv2006

Quantum Separability and Entanglement Detection via Entanglement-Witness Search and Global Optimization

We focus on determining the separability of an unknown bipartite quantum state $ρ$ by invoking a sufficiently large subset of all possible entanglement witnesses given the expected value of each element of a set of mutually orthogonal observables. We review the concept of an entanglement witness from the geometrical point of view and use this geometry to show that the set of separable states is not a polytope and to characterize the class of entanglement witnesses (observables) that detect entangled states on opposite sides of the set of separable states. All this serves to motivate a classical algorithm which, given the expected values of a subset of an orthogonal basis of observables of an otherwise unknown quantum state, searches for an entanglement witness in the span of the subset of observables. The idea of such an algorithm, which is an efficient reduction of the quantum separability problem to a global optimization problem, was introduced in PRA 70 060303(R), where it was shown to be an improvement on the naive approach for the quantum separability problem (exhaustive search for a decomposition of the given state into a convex combination of separable states). The last section of the paper discusses in more generality such algorithms, which, in our case, assume a subroutine that computes the global maximum of a real function of several variables. Despite this, we anticipate that such algorithms will perform sufficiently well on small instances that they will render a feasible test for separability in some cases of interest (e.g. in 3-by-3 dimensional systems).

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arXiv2006

Convex Separation from Optimization via Heuristics

Let $K$ be a full-dimensional convex subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$. We describe a new polynomial-time Turing reduction from the weak separation problem for $K$ to the weak optimization problem for $K$ that is based on a geometric heuristic. We compare our reduction, which relies on analytic centers, with the standard, more general reduction.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2006

Computing finite-dimensional bipartite quantum separability

Ever since entanglement was identified as a computational and cryptographic resource, effort has been made to find an efficient way to tell whether a given density matrix represents an unentangled, or separable, state. Essentially, this is the quantum separability problem. Chapters 1 to 3 motivate a new interior-point algorithm which, given the expected values of a subset of an orthogonal basis of observables of an otherwise unknown quantum state, searches for an entanglement witness in the span of the subset of observables. When all the expected values are known, the algorithm solves the separability problem. In Chapter 4, I give the motivation for the algorithm and show how it can be used in a particular physical scenario to detect entanglement (or decide separability) of an unknown quantum state using as few quantum resources as possible. I then explain the intuitive idea behind the algorithm and relate it to the standard algorithms of its kind. I end the chapter with a comparison of the complexities of the algorithms surveyed in Chapter 3. Finally, in Chapter 5, I present the details of the algorithm and discuss its performance relative to standard methods.

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