arXiv subjects

Stephanie D. C. Wehner

Publications and source records attributed to Stephanie D. C. Wehner.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Verifiable blind quantum computing: Comparative analysis and design considerations for client architectures

Blind quantum computing (BQC) allows a client to delegate quantum computations to a remote server without revealing the input, computation, or output. In addition to being blind, the client can sometimes also verify that the server has performed their instructions correctly, a property known as verifiability. A key part of realizing such verifiable BQC (VBQC) is choosing the design of the client device: many architectures have been proposed, each with different hardware requirements, security properties, and performance characteristics, making it difficult to identify which is most suitable for a given implementation. In this work, we present a comparative analysis of client architectures for VBQC with a matter-qubit server. We restrict our analysis to single-server, single-client protocols with information-theoretic security based on measurement-based quantum computation. We identify three main categories of client: emission-based, measurement-based, and rotation-based, each with multiple variants depending on how the client interacts with the server. We evaluate each across different dimensions: we compare guarantees of existing corresponding security proofs, we derive equations for the rate at which each client can execute a protocol, we provide an overview of each architecture's error behaviour, and discuss hardware cost and design considerations. Client architectures implementing measurement-based remote state preparation and reflection-based teleportation emerge as strong default candidates, but as the right choice remains context-dependent, we provide a framework for navigating considerations to guide the selection of the most suitable architecture for a given setting.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Optimizing Resource Costs: A Practical Guide to Achieving Target Security in Verifiable Blind Quantum Computing

Verifiable blind quantum computing (VBQC) enables a resource-limited client to securely delegate computations to an untrusted quantum server while maintaining privacy and detecting deviations from the prescribed computation. The noise-robust VBQC protocol of Leichtle et al. achieves this through a round-based structure: the client delegates multiple computation rounds and test rounds, using the test outcomes to detect cheating while tolerating honest hardware noise. The protocol's security proof involves numerous interdependent parameters, making it non-trivial to find a valid parameter set for a given hardware noise level and security target. We formalize this as a constrained optimization problem and develop a practical framework to solve it. The framework yields the protocol parameters that minimize the number of rounds for any given setup. We derive a heuristic formula for the minimal number of rounds to help understand the scaling with noise and security targets and to provide rapid resource estimation. Since the number of rounds depends on noise while the time per round depends on hardware rate, the framework also enables optimization of rate-fidelity trade-offs to minimize end-to-end runtime. We demonstrate both applications through a case study of a trapped-ion server with a measurement-only client, showing how the client's polarization control hardware specifications translate into protocol parameters and runtime estimates, providing concrete guidance for near-term implementations.

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arXiv2026

Remotely Preparing Many Qubits with a Single Photon

A single photon in a superposition of $d$ modes naturally encode a $d$-dimensional quantum system, a so-called qudit. We show that such superpositions can be leveraged to achieve a quantum speed-up of remote remote state preparation (RSP): a primitive for several quantum network protocols. For a superposition over $d\geq 2$ modes, the photon state can encode up to ${\rm Log}_2(d)$ qubits, which we exploit in a proposed reflection based RSP protocol with multiple variations. For single qubit RSP, we achieve a performance comparable to the best known existing schemes but with reduced requirements for phase stabilization. For many qubit RSP the achievable success rates remain high despite needing exponentially many temporal modes, since only one photon needs to be transmitted and detected to prepare multiple qubits. By simultaneously preparing many qubits at once, we bypass limited qubit lifetimes limited qubit lifetimes and improve fidelities beyond what is achievable with existing RSP protocols.

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arXiv2026

Quantum Strategies to Overcome Classical Multiplexing Limits

Near-term quantum networks face a bottleneck due to low quantum communication rates. This degrades performance both by lowering operating speeds and increasing qubit storage time in noisy memories, making some quantum internet applications infeasible. One way to circumvent this bottleneck is multiplexing: combining multiple signals into a single signal to improve the overall rate. Standard multiplexing techniques are classical in that they do not make use of coherence between quantum channels nor account for decoherence rates that vary during a protocol's execution. In this paper, we first derive semiclassical limits to multiplexing for many-qubit protocols, and then introduce two techniques: single click quantum multiplexing and multi-server multiplexing. These can enable beyond-classical multiplexing advantages. We illustrate these techniques through three example applications: 1) entanglement generation between two asymetric quantum network nodes (i.e., repeaters or quantum servers with inequal memories), 2) remote state preparation between many end user devices and a single quantum node, and 3) remote state preparation between one end user device and many internetworked quantum nodes. By utilizing many noisy internetworked quantum devices instead of fewer low-noise devices, our multiplexing strategies enable new paths towards achieving high-speed many-qubit quantum network applications.

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arXiv2025

Single-click protocols for remote state preparation using weak coherent pulses

Remote state preparation (RSP) allows one party to remotely prepare a known quantum state on another party's qubit using entanglement. This can be used in quantum networks to perform applications such as blind quantum computing or long-distance quantum key distribution (QKD) with quantum repeaters. Devices to perform RSP, referred to as a client, ideally have low hardware requirements, such as only sending photonic qubits. A weak coherent pulse source offers a practical alternative to true single-photon sources and is already widely used in QKD. Here, we introduce two new protocols to the previously known protocol for RSP with a weak-coherent-pulse-based device. The known technique uses a double-click (DC) protocol, where a photon from both the server and the client needs to reach an intermediate Bell state measurement. Here, we add to that a single-click (SC) RSP protocol, which requires only one photon to reach the Bell state measurement, allowing for better performance in certain regimes. In addition, we introduce a double-single-click (DSC) protocol, where the SC protocol is repeated twice, and a CNOT gate is applied between the resulting qubits. DSC mitigates the need for phase stabilization in certain regimes, lowering technical complexity while still improving performance compared to DC in some regimes. We compare these protocols in terms of fidelity and rate, finding that SC consistently achieves higher rates than DC and, interestingly, does not suffer from an inherently lower fidelity than the DC, as is the case for entanglement generation. Although SC provides stronger performance, DSC can still show performance improvements over DC, and it may have reduced technical complexity compared to SC. Lastly, we show how these protocols can be used in long-distance QKD using quantum repeaters.

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