Securing quantum networking tasks with multipartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering (original) (raw)

Indirect Eavesdropping in Quantum Networks

2011

Quantum networks are communication networks in which adjacent nodes enjoy perfectly secure channels thanks to quantum key distribution (QKD). Drawing endto-end security from QKD-supported point-to-point security can be done by virtue of multipath transmission. This concept buys security at the cost of strongly connected networks and perfect routing. Particularly the latter is hard to ensure, since congestions or (passive) eavesdropping may cause QKD keybuffers to run empty, thus enforcing local re-routing of packets. Hence, the adversary may use eavesdropping not to extract information, but to redirect the information flow towards a relay-node that he controls. Such attacks can readily invalidate the stringent requirements of multipath transmission protocols and thus defeat any formal arguments for perfect secrecy. Moreover, this form of "indirect eavesdropping" seems to be unconsidered in the literature so far. We investigate whether or not unconditional security in a quantum network with nonreliable routing is possible. Using Markov-chains, we derive various sufficient criteria for retaining perfect secrecy under imperfect packet relay. In particular, we explicitly do not assume trusted relay or quantum repeaters available.

Shareability of quantum steering and its relation with entanglement

Physical Review A, 2020

Steerability is a characteristic of quantum correlations lying in between entanglement and Bell nonlocality. Understanding how these steering correlations can be shared between different parties has profound applications in ensuring security of quantum communication protocols. Here we show that at most two bipartite reduced states of a three qubit state can violate the three settings CJWR linear steering inequality contrary to two settings linear steering inequality. This result explains that quantum steering correlations have limited shareability properties and can sometimes even be nonmonogamous. In contrast to the two setting measurement scenario, three setting scenario turns out to be more useful to develop deeper understanding of shareability of tripartite steering correlations. Apart from distribution of steering correlations, several relations between reduced bipartite steering, different measures of bipartite entanglement of reduced states and genuine tripartite entanglement are presented here. The results enable detection of different kind of tripartite entanglement.

Equitable Multiparty Quantum Communication Without a Trusted Third Party

Physical Review Applied, 2020

Multiparty quantum communication provides delightful applications including quantum cryptographic communication and quantum secret sharing. Measurement-Device-Independent (MDI) quantum communication based on the Greenberg-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state measurement provides a practical way to implement multiparty quantum communication. With the standard spatially localized GHZ state measurement, however, information can be imbalanced among the communication parties that can cause significant problems in multiparty cryptographic communication. Here, we propose an equitable multiparty quantum communication where information balance among the communication parties is achieved without a trusted third party. Our scheme is based on the GHZ state measurement which is not spatially localized but implemented in a way that all the distant communication parties symmetrically participate. We also verify the feasibility of our scheme by presenting the proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of informationally balanced three-party quantum communication using weak coherent pulses.

Turning Quantum Cryptography against itself: How to avoid indirect eavesdropping in quantum networks by passive and active adversaries

2015

Abstract—Quantum networks are communication networks in which adjacent nodes enjoy perfectly secure channels thanks to quantum key distribution (QKD). While QKD is renowned for perfect point-to-point security and its eavesdropping detec-tion capabilities, end-to-end security is nontrivial to achieve. More importantly, the eavesdropping detection can indeed be turned against the system itself. It is known that perfect end-to-end security can be created from point-to-point security by means of multipath transmission (in fact, there is no other way to do this, assuming no pre-shared secrets and avoiding public-key cryptography). However, multipath transmission requires node-disjoint paths, which in turn are to be assured by the underlying routing protocol. At this point, an active or passive adversary may intentionally eavesdrop on the QKD protocol to temporarily cut a channel and to cause key-buffers running empty and enforcing local rerouting of packets towards nodes under his contro...

Tripartite Quantum State Sharing

Physical Review Letters, 2004

We demonstrate a multipartite protocol to securely distribute and reconstruct a quantum state. A secret quantum state is encoded into a tripartite entangled state and distributed to three players. By collaborating, any two of the three players can reconstruct the state, whilst individual players obtain nothing. We characterize this (2, 3) threshold quantum state sharing scheme in terms of fidelity, signal transfer and reconstruction noise. We demonstrate a fidelity averaged over all reconstruction permutations of 0.73 ± 0.04, a level achievable only using quantum resources.

No-cloning of quantum steering

2016

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering allows two parties to verify their entanglement, even if one party's measurements are untrusted. This concept has not only provided new insights into the nature of non-local spatial correlations in quantum mechanics, but also serves as a resource for one-sided device-independent quantum information tasks. Here, we investigate how EPR steering behaves when one-half of a maximally-entangled pair of qudits (multidimensional quantum systems) is cloned by a universal cloning machine. We find that EPR steering, as verified by a criterion based on the mutual information between qudits, can only be found in one of the copy subsystems but not both. We prove that this is also true for the single-system analogue of EPR steering. We find that this restriction, which we term "no-cloning of quantum steering", elucidates the physical reason why steering can be used to secure sources and channels against cloning-based attacks when implementing qu...

Enhancing robustness of multiparty quantum correlations using weak measurement

Annals of Physics, 2014

Multipartite quantum correlations are important resources for the development of quantum information and computation protocols. However, the resourcefulness of multipartite quantum correlations in practical settings is limited by its fragility under decoherence due to environmental interactions. Though there exist protocols to protect bipartite entanglement under decoherence, the implementation of such protocols for multipartite quantum correlations has not been sufficiently explored. Here, we study the effect of local amplitude damping channel on the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state, and use a protocol of optimal reversal quantum weak measurement to protect the multipartite quantum correlations. We observe that the weak measurement reversal protocol enhances the robustness of multipartite quantum correlations. Further it increases the critical damping value that corresponds to entanglement sudden death. To emphasize the efficacy of the technique in protection of multipartite quantum correlation, we investigate two proximately related quantum communication tasks, namely, quantum teleportation in a one sender, many receivers setting and multiparty quantum information splitting, through a local amplitude damping channel. We observe an increase in the average fidelity of both the quantum communication tasks under the weak measurement reversal protocol. The method may prove beneficial, for combating external interactions, in other quantum information tasks using multipartite resources.

Experimental temporal steering and security of quantum key distribution with mutually-unbiased bases

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering is a form of nonlocal correlation between two quantum systems where one of them remotely controls another solely via local measurements. This allows two parties to verify their entanglement even if one of them is untrusted, making it essential to quantum cryptography and communications. Here we study temporal steering (TS), which is a temporal counterpart to EPR steering, and discuss how it is related to the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols. We report the first experiment on TS by detecting the polarisation of photons sent in specific states through a noisy channel. We implemented two popular QKD protocols based on mutually-unbiased bases (MUB). We analysed TS by applying a TS inequality and a temporal counterpart of the EPR steerable weight. We connected TS, QKD, and quantum cloning to explain why and when the MUB-based protocols are secure.

Witnessing Single-System Steering for Quantum Information Processing

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering describes how different ensembles of quantum states can be remotely prepared by measuring one particle of an entangled pair. Here, inspired by this bipartite concept, we investigate quantum steering for single quantum d-level systems (qudits) and devise several quantum witnesses to efficiently verify the steerability therein, which are applicable both to single-system steering and EPR steering. In the single-system case our steering witnesses enable the unambiguous ruling-out of generic classical means of mimicking steering. Ruling out 'false-steering' scenarios has implications for securing channels against both cloning-based individual attack and coherent attacks when implementing quantum key distribution using qudits. In addition, we show that these steering witnesses also have applications in quantum information, in that they can serve as an efficient criterion for the evaluation of quantum logic gates of arbitrary size. Finally, we describe how the non-local EPR variant of these witnesses also function as tools for identifying faithful one-way quantum computation and secure entanglement-based quantum communication.