skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Quantum state targeting

Journal Article · · Physical Review. A
 [1];  [2]
  1. Bell Labs, 600-700 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974 (United States)
  2. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 2Y5 (Canada)

We introduce a primitive for quantum cryptography that we term 'state targeting'. We show that increasing one's probability of success in this task above a minimum amount implies an unavoidable increase in the probability of a particular kind of failure. This is analogous to the unavoidable disturbance to a quantum state that results from gaining information about its identity, and can be shown to be a purely quantum effect. We solve various optimization problems for state targeting that are useful for the security analysis of two-party cryptographic tasks implemented between remote antagonistic parties. Although we focus on weak coin flipping, the results are significant for other two-party protocols, such as strong coin flipping, partially binding and concealing bit commitment, and bit escrow. Furthermore, the results have significance not only for the traditional notion of security in cryptography, that of restricting a cheater's ability to bias the outcome of the protocol, but also for a different notion of security that arises only in the quantum context, that of cheat sensitivity. Finally, our analysis leads to some interesting secondary results, namely, a generalization of Uhlmann's theorem and an operational interpretation of the fidelity between two mixed states.

OSTI ID:
20646182
Journal Information:
Physical Review. A, Vol. 70, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.70.052306; (c) 2004 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Security of quantum bit-string generation
Journal Article · Mon Nov 01 00:00:00 EST 2004 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:20646182

Fair loss-tolerant quantum coin flipping
Journal Article · Tue Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 2009 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:20646182

Superselection rules and quantum protocols
Journal Article · Sat May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2004 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:20646182