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Niklas Johansson

Publications and source records attributed to Niklas Johansson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

AutoTam: Specifying Secure Protocol Implementations with Tamarin Model Generation

Formal verification is a challenging but important task for ensuring the security of cryptographic protocols. While modern protocol verification tools significantly reduce verification effort, modelling remains challenging to practitioners without a background in formal verification. In addition, transferring verification results to a concrete protocol implementation requires expert knowledge. In this paper, we present a novel language-first method for verification of trace properties using a domain-specific language for protocol implementations. We target the Tamarin prover for verification, and we prove that verified universal trace properties translate back to the implementation. We additionally integrate symbolic execution in order to analyse the memory safety of protocol implementations. We use our tool to implement and generate accurate models for a signed Diffie-Hellman protocol, and for the WireGuard VPN protocol. Our WireGuard implementation is interoperable with existing implementations when using our interpreter, and achieves acceptable performance. We formally prove our implementations secure using a combination of symbolic execution and verification of the generated Tamarin models.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2026

Evaluating PQC KEMs, Combiners, and Cascade Encryption via Adaptive IND-CPA Testing Using Deep Learning

Ensuring ciphertext indistinguishability is fundamental to cryptographic security, but empirically validating this property in real implementations and hybrid settings presents practical challenges. The transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), with its hybrid constructions combining classical and quantum-resistant primitives, makes empirical validation approaches increasingly valuable. By modeling IND-CPA games as binary classification tasks and training on labeled ciphertext data with BCE loss, we study deep neural network (DNN) distinguishers for ciphertext indistinguishability. We apply this methodology to PQC KEMs. We specifically test the public-key encryption (PKE) schemes used to construct examples such as ML-KEM, BIKE, and HQC. Moreover, a novel extension of this DNN modeling for empirical distinguishability testing of hybrid KEMs is presented. We implement and test this on combinations of PQC KEMs with plain RSA, RSA-OAEP, and plaintext. Finally, methodological generality is illustrated by applying the DNN IND-CPA classification framework to cascade symmetric encryption, where we test combinations of AES-CTR, AES-CBC, AES-ECB, ChaCha20, and DES-ECB. In our experiments on PQC algorithms, KEM combiners, and cascade encryption, no algorithm or combination of algorithms demonstrates a significant advantage (two-sided binomial test, significance level $\alpha = 0.01$), consistent with theoretical guarantees that hybrids including at least one IND-CPA-secure component preserve indistinguishability, and with the absence of exploitable patterns under the considered DNN adversary model. These illustrate the potential of using deep learning as an adaptive, practical, and versatile empirical estimator for indistinguishability in more general IND-CPA settings, allowing data-driven validation of implementations and compositions and complementing the analytical security analysis.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2024

Phase Coordinate Uncomputation in Quantum Recursive Fourier Sampling

Recursive Fourier Sampling (RFS) was one of the earliest problems to demonstrate a quantum advantage, and is known to lie outside the Merlin--Arthur complexity class. This work contains a new description of quantum algorithms in phase space terminology, demonstrating its use in RFS, and how and why this gives a better understanding of the quantum advantage in RFS. Most importantly, describing the computational process of quantum computation in phase space terminology gives a much better understanding of why uncomputation is necessary when solving RFS: the advantage is present only when phase coordinate garbage is uncomputed. This is the underlying reason for the limitations of the quantum advantage.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2021

Conjugate Logic

We propose a conjugate logic that can capture the behavior of quantum and quantum-like systems. The proposal is similar to the more generic concept of epistemic logic: it encodes knowledge or perhaps more correctly, predictions about outcomes of future observations on some systems. For a quantum system, these predictions are statements about future outcomes of measurements performed on specific degrees of freedom of the system. The proposed logic will include propositions and their relations including connectives, but importantly also transformations between propositions on conjugate degrees of freedom of the systems. A key point is the addition of a transformation that allows to convert propositions about single systems into propositions about correlations between systems. We will see that subtle choices of the properties of the transformations lead to drastically different underlying mathematical models; one choice gives stabilizer quantum mechanics, while another choice gives Spekkens' toy theory. This points to a crucial basic property of quantum and quantum-like systems that can be handled within the present conjugate logic by adjusting the mentioned choice. It also enables a discussion on what behaviors are properly quantum or only quantum-like, relating to that choice and how it manifests in the system under scrutiny.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2019

Quantum Simulation Logic, Oracles, and the Quantum Advantage

Query complexity is a common tool for comparing quantum and classical computation, and it has produced many examples of how quantum algorithms differ from classical ones. Here we investigate in detail the role that oracles play for the advantage of quantum algorithms. We do so by using a simulation framework, Quantum Simulation Logic (QSL), to construct oracles and algorithms that solve some problems with the same success probability and number of queries as the quantum algorithms. The framework can be simulated using only classical resources at a constant overhead as compared to the quantum resources used in quantum computation. Our results clarify the assumptions made and the conditions needed when using quantum oracles. Using the same assumptions on oracles within the simulation framework we show that for some specific algorithms, like the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's algorithms, there simply is no advantage in terms of query complexity. This does not detract from the fact that quantum query complexity provides examples of how a quantum computer can be expected to behave, which in turn has proved useful for finding new quantum algorithms outside of the oracle paradigm, where the most prominent example is Shor's algorithm for integer factorization.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Efficient classical simulation of the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's algorithms

A long-standing aim of quantum information research is to understand what gives quantum computers their advantage. This requires separating problems that need genuinely quantum resources from those for which classical resources are enough. Two examples of quantum speed-up are the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's problem, both efficiently solvable on a quantum Turing machine, and both believed to lack efficient classical solutions. Here we present a framework that can simulate both quantum algorithms efficiently, solving the Deutsch-Jozsa problem with probability 1 using only one oracle query, and Simon's problem using linearly many oracle queries, just as expected of an ideal quantum computer. The presented simulation framework is in turn efficiently simulatable in a classical probabilistic Turing machine. This shows that the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's problem do not require any genuinely quantum resources, and that the quantum algorithms show no speed-up when compared with their corresponding classical simulation. Finally, this gives insight into what properties are needed in the two algorithms, and calls for further study of oracle separation between quantum and classical computation.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2017

Realization of Shor's Algorithm at Room Temperature

Shor's algorithm can find prime factors of a large number more efficiently than any known classical algorithm. Understanding the properties that gives the speedup is essential for a general and scalable construction. Here we present a realization of Shor's algorithm, that does not need any of the simplifications presently needed in current experiments and also gives smaller systematic errors than any former experimental implementation. Our realization is based on classical pass-transistor logic, runs at room temperature, and uses the same amount of resources as a scalable quantum computer. In this paper, the focus is not on the result of the factorization, but to compare our realization with current state-of-the-art experiment, factoring 15. Our result gives further insight to the resources needed for quantum computation, aiming for a true understanding of the subject.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2015

Efficient classical simulation of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm

In 1985, David Deutsch challenged the Church-Turing thesis by stating that his quantum model of computation "could, in principle, be built and would have many remarkable properties not reproducible by any Turing machine". While this is thought to be true in general, there is usually no way of knowing that the corresponding classical algorithms are the best possible solutions. Here we provide an efficient classical simulation of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, which was one of the first examples of quantum computational speed-up. Our conclusion is that the Deutsch-Jozsa quantum algorithm owes its speed-up to resources that are not necessarily quantum-mechanical, and when compared with the classical simulation offers no speed-up at all.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2013

Lobachevsky holography in conformal Chern-Simons gravity

We propose Lobachevsky boundary conditions that lead to asymptotically H^2xR solutions. As an example we check their consistency in conformal Chern-Simons gravity. The canonical charges are quadratic in the fields, but nonetheless integrable, conserved and finite. The asymptotic symmetry algebra consists of one copy of the Virasoro algebra with central charge c=24k, where k is the Chern-Simons level, and an affine u(1). We find also regular non-perturbative states and show that none of them corresponds to black hole solutions. We attempt to calculate the one-loop partition function, find a remarkable separation between bulk and boundary modes, but conclude that the one-loop partition function is ill-defined due to an infinite degeneracy. We comment on the most likely resolution of this degeneracy.

hep-th↗
arXiv2012

Holographic two-point functions for 4d log-gravity

We compute holographic one- and two-point functions of critical higher-curvature gravity in four dimensions. The two most important operators are the stress tensor and its logarithmic partner, sourced by ordinary massless and by logarithmic non-normalisable gravitons, respectively. In addition, the logarithmic gravitons source two ordinary operators, one with spin-one and one with spin-zero. The one-point function of the stress tensor vanishes for all Einstein solutions, but has a non-zero contribution from logarithmic gravitons. The two-point functions of all operators match the expectations from a three-dimensional logarithmic conformal field theory.

hep-th↗
arXiv2012

Conformal Chern-Simons holography - lock, stock and barrel

We discuss a fine-tuning of rather generic three dimensional higher-curvature gravity actions that leads to gauge symmetry enhancement at the linearized level via partial masslessness. Requiring this gauge symmetry to be present also non-linearly reduces such actions to conformal Chern-Simons gravity. We perform a canonical analysis of this theory and construct the gauge generators and associated charges. We provide and classify admissible boundary conditions. The boundary conditions on the conformal equivalence class of the metric render one chirality of the partially massless Weyl gravitons normalizable and the remaining one non-normalizable. There are three choices - trivial, fixed or free - for the Weyl factors of the bulk metric and of the boundary metric. This proliferation of boundary conditions leads to various physically distinct scenarios of holography that we study in detail, extending considerably the discussion initiated in 1106.6299. In particular, the dual CFT may contain an additional scalar field with or without background charge, depending on the choices above.

hep-th↗
arXiv2011

Restrictions on infinite sequences of type IIB vacua

Ashok and Douglas have shown that infinite sequences of type IIB flux vacua with imaginary self-dual flux can only occur in so-called D-limits, corresponding to singular points in complex structure moduli space. In this work we refine this no-go result by demonstrating that there are no infinite sequences accumulating to the large complex structure point of a certain class of one-parameter Calabi-Yau manifolds. We perform a similar analysis for conifold points and for the decoupling limit, obtaining identical results. Furthermore, we establish the absence of infinite sequences in a D-limit corresponding to the large complex structure limit of a two-parameter Calabi-Yau. In particular, our results demonstrate analytically that the series of vacua recently discovered by Ahlqvist et al., seemingly accumulating to the large complex structure point, are finite. We perform a numerical study of these series close to the large complex structure point using appropriate approximations for the period functions. This analysis reveals that the series bounce out from the large complex structure point, and that the flux eventually ceases to be imaginary self-dual. Finally, we study D-limits for F-theory compactifications on K3\times K3 for which the finiteness of supersymmetric vacua is already established. We do find infinite sequences of flux vacua which are, however, identified by automorphisms of K3.

hep-th↗
arXiv2011

Short-cut to new anomalies in gravity duals to logarithmic conformal field theories

Various massive gravity theories in three dimensions are conjecturally dual to logarithmic conformal field theories (LCFTs). We summarise the status of these conjectures. LCFTs are characterised by the values of the central charges and the so-called "new anomalies". We employ a short-cut to calculate these new anomalies in generalised massive gravity and in the recently proposed higher-derivative gravity theories with holographic c-theorem. Both cases permit LCFTs exhibiting intriguing features, like rank three Jordan cells or non-zero central charges. Finally, as an example we discuss in some detail the partially massless version of new massive gravity, a theory with several special properties that we call "partially massless gravity".

hep-th↗
arXiv2010

All stationary axi-symmetric local solutions of topologically massive gravity

We classify all stationary axi-symmetric solutions of topologically massive gravity into Einstein, Schrödinger, warped and generic solutions. We construct explicitly all local solutions in the first three sectors and present an algorithm for the numerical construction of all local solutions in the generic sector. The only input for this algorithm is the value of one constant of motion if the solution has an analytic centre, and three constants of motion otherwise. We present several examples, including soliton solutions that asymptote to warped AdS.

hep-th↗
arXiv2010

Gravity duals for logarithmic conformal field theories

Logarithmic conformal field theories with vanishing central charge describe systems with quenched disorder, percolation or dilute self-avoiding polymers. In these theories the energy momentum tensor acquires a logarithmic partner. In this talk we address the construction of possible gravity duals for these logarithmic conformal field theories and present two viable candidates for such duals, namely theories of massive gravity in three dimensions at a chiral point.

hep-th↗
arXiv2009

Instability in cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point

We consider cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point with positive sign of the Einstein-Hilbert term. We demonstrate the presence of a negative energy bulk mode that grows linearly in time. Unless there are physical reasons to discard this mode, this theory is unstable. To address this issue we prove that the mode is not pure gauge and that its negative energy is time-independent and finite. The isometry generators L_0 and \bar{L}_0 have non-unitary matrix representations like in logarithmic CFT. While the new mode obeys boundary conditions that are slightly weaker than the ones by Brown and Henneaux, its fall-off behavior is compatible with spacetime being asymptotically AdS_3. We employ holographic renormalization to show that the variational principle is well-defined. The corresponding Brown-York stress tensor is finite, traceless and conserved. Finally we address possibilities to eliminate the instability and prospects for chiral gravity.

hep-th↗
arXiv2009

Erratum to `Instability in cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point', arXiv:0805.2610

We correct a sign in the first variation of the on-shell action of cosmological topologically massive gravity at the chiral point and present the three equations affected by that sign. While this does not change any of the main conclusions of arXiv:0805.2610, it modifies the finite part of the Brown-York stress tensor. Our corrected Brown-York stress tensor is still finite, conserved and traceless, but no longer coincides with that of global AdS_3. It agrees with results found in recent literature.

hep-th↗