arXiv subjects

Osamu Hirota

Publications and source records attributed to Osamu Hirota.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Quantum estimation theory with quantum noise control

Quantum estimation theory serves as one of fundamental backbones of quantum Shannon information theory and was mathematically systematized by pioneers of quantum information science. Although its applied research saw limited progress for a long period, the 21st century has witnessed active discussions and numerous fruitful proposals regarding its applications. Notably, the contributions of Monras and Paris represent one of the most remarkable achievements addressing the realization problem of estimation bounds. This paper aims to demonstrate a practical direction for extending their original ideas. Next-generation quantum information mechanisms urgently demand guarantees of quantum advantage unattainable by classical theory, alongside strict real-time processing without delays. By leveraging the concept of generalized heterodyne detection proposed nearly half a century ago, we demonstrate that a scheme based on their results can effectively meet the stringent requirements of near-future information technologies.

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arXiv2026

Comparison of security mechanisms of Mathematical cipher, Wyner scheme, QKD, and Quantum stream cipher

A new generation of global communications technology has been emerging. These systems, which utilize established device technologies and quantum effect devices, require ultra-high speeds, low cost, and strong security. In recent years, global communication systems have faced various practical security challenges depending on their configurations, and research efforts are underway to address these issues. In particular, the issue of the security of physical layer security from microwave wireless systems to quantum optical communication systems is urgent problem. However, concepts of cryptographic schemes have also been diversifying. Typical examples are mathematical ciphers, the Wyner scheme and QKD. Then, the Y-00 protocol has recently emerged as a third pillar cryptographic technology in the optical quantum domain. These security principles differ significantly from one another. This makes it difficult for different fields to understand each other. At this stage, comparative explanations of the security principles underlying these various cryptographic technologies are likely to promote mutual understanding among researchers across different fields. As the first trial, this lecture note explains the security mechanism of the third pillar (Y-00), comparing it with the principles of other mechanisms.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Shannon Information Theory -Design of communication, cipher and sensor-

One of the key aspects of Shannon's theory is that it provides guidance for designing the most efficient systems, such as minimizing errors and clarifying the limits of coding. Such theories have made great developments in the 50 years since 1948. It has played a vital role in enabling the development of modern ultra-fast, stable, and highly dependable information and communication systems. The Shannon theory is supported by the statistical communication theory such as detection and estimation theory. The theory of communication systems that transmit Shannon information using quantum media is called quantum Shannon information theory, and research began in the 1960s. The theoretical formulation comparable to conventional Shannon theory has been completed. Its important role is to suggest that application of quantum effect will surpass existing communication performance. It would be meaningless if performance, efficiency, and utility were to deteriorate due to quantum effects, even if certain new function is given. This paper suggests that there are various limitations to utilizing quantum Shannon information theory to benefit real-world communication systems and presents a theoretical framework for achieving the ultimate goal. Finally, we introduce the perfect secure cipher that overcome the Shannon impossibility theorem without degrading communication performance and sensor et al as the examples.

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arXiv2025

Quantum stream cipher and Quantum block cipher -The Era of 100 Gbit/sec real-time encryption-

This paper is the part-II of the previous paper and introduces the world of Yuen's concept. In the theory of cryptology, the Shannon impossibility theorem states that the upper bound of the security of a plaintext against a ciphertext-only attack is the entropy of the secret key. At the same time, it gives the upper bound of the unicity distance against a known plaintext attack. Hence the development of a new symmetric key cipher requires finding a way to undo or lift this theorem. Such challenges have been attempted with quantum stream cipher and quantum data locking as block cipher. Both ciphers are designed by means of differentiating the receiving performance of Bob with key and Eve without key according to the principle of quantum communication theory. Thus, the origin of security of both ciphers come from the principle of keyed communication in quantum noise (KCQ) proposed by Yuen. In this paper, we explain and compare the principles and features of both cipher and assist to improve the quantum data locking scheme. Then we will introduce experimental research on quantum stream cipher towards commercialization, which has performance superior to conventional cipher.

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arXiv2025

Design of Quantum Stream Cipher: Part-I -Lifting the Shannon Impossibility Theorem-

This paper is dedicated to the late Professor H.P. Yuen in commemoration to our 50-year friendship. He invented the concept of quantum stream cipher. It is designed based on a completely different concept from conventional ciphers. The purpose of this cipher is to provide information-theoretic security of long data and secret key with short key length. It is based on hiding the ciphertext of mathematical cipher with quantum noise, achieving unprecedented information-theoretic security in any cipher. The protocol corresponds to randomizing the ciphertext by means of differentiating the receiving performance of Bob with key and Eve without key according to the principle of quantum communication theory. In this paper, we introduce some progress on the specific method to develop from the standard type to generalized quantum stream cipher (Quantum Enigma Cipher). There are two methods for generalization. One is the additional randomization method by the product cipher form and the other is the M-th order extended quantum coding method. Here we discuss the former. The results proved that it has sufficient information-theoretic security against known plaintext attack on key in comparison with quantum data locking. The latter method will be reported in Part II.

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arXiv2024

An improvement of optical PPM communication with high security

The purpose of this paper is to celebrate Sir D. Payne's 80th birthday by dedicating our latest results as a continuation of his work in optical communications. One of the important issues in optical communications is to protect the transmission information data passing through optical fiber channels. Many ideas have been proposed and are being actively developed to implement in the physical layer of ultra-high-speed communications. As a representative example, a methodology that achieves this goal by fusing modulation techniques in ordinary optical communications and mathematical cipher is being actively studied. To further clarify this advantage, a theoretical concept has been proposed to solve the problem by adopting a PPM code format. However, this scheme has several difficulties at the implementation stage. Thus, this paper presents an optical scheme on modulation and receiver that eliminate those drawbacks.

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arXiv2022

Digest of Quantum Stream Cipher based on Holevo-Yuen Theory

So far, quantum key distribution (QKD) has been the main subject in the field of quantum cryptography, but that is not quantum cryptographic communication, it is only the ability to send keys for cryptographic purposes. To complete cryptographic communication, a technique for encrypting data is necessary, and the conventional cryptographic technique of mathematical symmetric key cipher or One Time Pad (OTP) is adopted in the discussion so far. However, OTP is not the ultimate cipher for data encryption, because it does not satisfy security conditions in the modern cryptology. Around 2000, a new quantum stream cipher was proposed as a technique to challenge the possibility of overcoming drawbacks of OTP in practical use. Recently, we have published some review papers on it in Entropy (Open access journal), and others. This paper introduces an overview and a back ground of our paper that is entitled Quantum stream cipher based on Holevo-Yuen theory.

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arXiv2020

Application of quantum Pinsker inequality to quantum communications

Back in the 1960s, based on Wiener's thought, Shikao Ikehara (first student of N.Wiener) encouraged the progress of Hisaharu Umegaki's research from a pure mathematical aspect in order to further develop the research on mathematical methods of quantum information at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Then, in the 1970s, based on the results accomplished by Umegaki Group, Ikehara instructed the author to develop and spread quantum information science as the global information science. While Umegaki Group's results have been evaluated as major achievements in pure mathematics, their contributions to current quantum information science have not been fully discussed. This paper gvies a survey of my talk in the memorial seminar on Ikehara, in which Ikehara and Umegaki Group's contributions to design theory of quantum communication have been introduced with specific examples such as quantum relative entropy and quantum Pinsker inequality.

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arXiv2015

Towards Quantum Enigma Cipher III -Communication performance-

Cloud computing system based on data centers has recently attracted considerable attention. In that system, all data are communicated via a high speed optical network between a customer and data center or between data centers. There is a serious threat so called "Eavesdropper data center business", which means the eavesdropper can get all data from the transmission line and sell specific data selected by the protocol analyzer to malicious people who want to get the secret data. So we need to consider cyber attack against Layer-1 (physical layer). Quantum cryptography has been developed to protect such an attack. In order to apply such a new security technologies, the communication performance is very important as well as its security, because the data speed is more than several Gbit/sec. This research note III will discuss communication performances of quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum enigma cipher, and explaines that QKD based on single photon signals cannot realize appropriate data speed, but quantum enigma cipher can.

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arXiv2015

Towards Quantum Enigma Cipher II-A protocol based on quantum illumination-

This research note II introduces a way to understand a basic concept of the quantum enigma cipher. The conventional cipher is designed by a mathematical algorithm and its security is evaluated by the complexity of the algorithm in security analysis and ability of computers. This kind of cipher can be decrypted with probability one in principle by the Brute force attack in which an eavesdropper tries all the possible keys based on the correct ciphertext and some known plaintext. A cipher with quantum effects in physical layer may protect the system from the Brute force attack by means of the quantum no cloning theorem and randomizations based on quantum noise effect. The randomizations for the ciphertext which is the output from the mathematical encryption box is crucial to realize a quantum enigma cipher. Especially, by randomizations, it is necessary to make a substantial difference in accuracy of ciphertext in eavesdropper's observation and legitimate user's observation. The quantum illumination protocol can make a difference in error performance of the legitimate's receiver and the eavesdropper's receiver. This difference is due to differences in ability of the legitimate's receiver with entanglement and the eavesdropper's receiver without entanglement. It is shown in this note that the quantum illumination can be employed as an element of the most simple quantum enigma cipher.

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arXiv2015

Towards Quantum Enigma Cipher

This research note suggests a new way to realize a high speed direct encryption based on quantum detection theory. The conventional cipher is designed by a mathematical algorithm and its security is evaluated by the complexity of the algorithm for cryptanalysis and ability of computers. This kind of cipher cannot exceed the Shannon limit of cryptography,and it can be decrypted with probability one in principle by trying all the possible keys against the data length equal to the secret key length. A cipher with quantum effect in physical layer may exceed the Shannon limit of cryptography. The quantum stream cipher by $α/η$ or Yuen-2000 protocol (Y-00) which operates at Gbit/sec is a typical example of such a cipher. That is, ciphertext of mathematical cipher with a secret key is masked by quantum noise of laser light when an eavesdropper observes optical signals as a ciphertext of the mathematical cipher, while the legitimate receiver does not suffer the quantum noise effect. As a result, the inherent difference of accuracy of ciphertext between eavesdropper and legitimate receiver arises. This is a necessary condition to exceed the Shannon limit of cryptography. In this note, we present a new method to generate an inherent difference of accuracy of the ciphertext, taking into account a fundamental properties of quantum detection schemes.

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arXiv2014

A correct security evaluation of quantum key distribution

There is no doubt that quantum key distribution is an excellent result as a science. However, this paper presents a view on quantum key distribution (QKD) wherein QKD may have a difficulty to provide a sufficient security and good communication performance in real world networks. In fact, a one-time pad forwarded by QKD model with $\barε=10^{-6}$ may be easily decrypted by key estimation. Despite that researchers know several criticisms on the theoretical incompleteness on the security evaluation, Portmann and Rennner, and others still avert from the discussion on criticism, and experimental groups tend to make exaggerated claims about their own work by making it seems that QKD is applicable to commercial communication systems. All such claims are based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of criteria of information theoretic security in cryptography. A severe situation has arisen as a result, one that will impair a healthy development of quantum information science (QIS). Thus, the author hopes that this paper will help to stimulate discussions on developing a more detailed theory.

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arXiv2014

Masking Property of Quantum Random Cipher with Phase Mask Encryption -Towards Quantum Enigma Cipher-

The security analysis of physical encryption protocol based on coherent pulse position modulation(CPPM) originated by Yuen is one of the most interesting topics in the study of cryptosystem with a security level beyond the Shannon limit. Although the implementation of CPPM scheme has certain difficulty, several methods have been proposed recently. This paper deals with the CPPM encryption in terms of symplectic transformation, which includes a phase mask encryption as a special example, and formulates a unified security analysis for such encryption schemes. Specifically, we give a lower bound of Eve's symbol error probability using reliability function theory to ensure that our proposed system exceeds the Shannon limit. Then we assume the secret key is given to Eve after her heterodyne measurement. Since this assumption means that Eve has a great advantage in the sense of the conventional cryptography, the lower bound of her error indeed ensures the security level beyond the Shannon limit. In addition, we show some numerical examples of the security performance.

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arXiv2013

Misconception in Theory of Quantum Key Distribution -Reply to Renner-

It has been pointed out by Yuen that the security theory of quantum key distribution(QKD) guided by Shor-Preskill theory has serious defects, in particular their key rate theory is not correct. Theory groups of QKD tried to improve several defects. Especially, Renner employed trace distance and quantum leftover Hash Lemma. However, the present theory encountered a problem of a quantitative evaluation of security. To cope with it, he uses a wrong interpretation on the trace distance and its level epsilon_{sec}, and justifies the unconditional security of own system when epsilon_{sec} is 10^{-6 } ~ 10^{-20}. In this paper, we discuss the following problems. What is the origin of the misconception of the present theory? How does the present theory lead to the misconception?. To show their process toward the misconception, Koashi-Preskill's theory which has a typical misconception is examined. A main point of our comment is that QKD theory ignores the security requirement against attacker which is necessary to compare whole encryption schemes from classical to quantum. To clarify it, we emphasize that the trace distance itself cannot have any operational meaning such as failure probability, and it is only mathematical tool as a measure of closeness. As a result, it is given that the security with above values derived from their formulation means nothing in the general cryptological sense. In addition, I point out that a comment by Bennett and Riedel on unconditional security of QKD is not correct. Also, I point out that the experimental systems of groups of Los Alamos, Toshiba-UK, NICT, and others cannot have security guarantee even in future.

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arXiv2012

Incompleteness and Limit of Quantum Key Distribution Theory

It is claimed in the many papers that a trace distance ($d$) guarantees the universal composition security in quantum key distribution (QKD). In this introduction paper, at first, it is explicitly explained what is the main misconception in the claim of the unconditional security for QKD theory. In general terms, the cause of the misunderstanding on the security claim is the Lemma in the paper of Renner. It suggests that the generation of the perfect random key is assured by the probability $ (1-d)$, and its failure probability is $d$. Thus, it concludes that the generated key provides the perfect random key sequence when the protocol suceeds. So the QKD provides perfect secrecy to the one time pad. This is the reason for the composition claim. However, the quantity of the trace distance (or variational distance) is not the probability for such an event. If $d $ is not small enough, always the generated key sequence is not uniform. Now one needs the reconstruction of the evaluation of the trace distance if one wants to use it. One should first go back to the indistinguishability theory in the computational complexity based, and to clarify the meaning of the value of the variational distance. In addition, the same analysis for the information theoretic case is necessary. The recent serial papers by H.P.Yuen have given the answer on such questions. In this paper, we show more concise description of Yuen's theory, and clarify that the recent upper bound theories for the trace distance by Tomamichel et al and Hayashi et al are constructed based on the reasoning of Renner and it is unsuitable as the analysis for information theoretic security. Finally, we introduce a macroscopic quantum communication with different principle to replace Q-bit QKD.

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arXiv2012

Effectiveness of entangled coherent state in quantum metrology

This Letter verifies the potential of several classes of entangled coherent state in well known quantum metrology which includes detection of classical external force, and shows that there is a class of entangled coherent state for the external force detection system without the quantum limit in the detection of the light. In the case of the precision measurement of continuos parameter like phase measurement, the entangled coherent state with perfect entanglement does not provide remarkable benefit, but we provide a concrete example that certain class of entangled coherent state gives a remarkable sensitive detection scheme in the discrimination of digital signal affected by external force.

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arXiv2011

Error free Quantum Reading by Quasi Bell State of Entangled Coherent States

Non-classical states of light field have been exploited to provide marvellous results in quantum information science. Effectiveness of nonclassical states depends on whether physical parameter as signal is continuous or digital. Here we present an investigation on the potential of quasi Bell state of entangled coherent states in quantum reading of the classical digital memory which was pioneered by Pirandola. This is a typical example of discrete quantum discrimination. We show that the quasi Bell state gives the error free performance in the quantum reading that cannot be obtained by any classical state.

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arXiv2010

Coherent pulse position modulation quantum cipher supported by secret key

A quantum cipher supported by a secret key so called keyed communication in quantum noise (KCQ) is very attractive in implementing high speed key generation and secure data transmission. However, Yuen-2000 as a basic model of KCQ has a difficulty to ensure the quantitative security evaluation because all physical parameter for the cipher system is finite. Recently, an outline of a generalized scheme so called coherent pulse position modulation(CPPM) to show the rigorous security analysis is given, where the parameters are allowed to be asymptotical. This may open a new way for the quantum key distribution with coherent states of considerable energy and high speed. In this paper, we clarify a generation method of CPPM quantum signal by using a theory of unitary operator and symplectic transformation, and show an asymptotic property of security and its numerical examples.

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