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arXiv:2006.00708 · New Journal of Physics

Multi-party quantum fingerprinting with weak coherent pulses: circuit design and protocol analysis

Hipólito Gómez-Sousa

Published Oct 20, 2020• 1 citation
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Abstract

Abstract Quantum communication has been leading the way of many remarkable theoretical results and experimental tests in physics. In this context, quantum communication complexity (QCC) has recently drawn earnest research attention as a tool to optimize the amounts of transmitted qubits and energy that are required to implement distributed computational tasks. On this matter, we introduce a novel multi-user quantum fingerprinting (QF) protocol that is ready to be implemented with existing technology. Particularly, we extend to the multi-user framework a well-known two-user coherent-state fingerprinting scheme. This generalization is highly non-trivial for a twofold reason, as it requires not only to extend the set of protocol rules but also to specify a procedure for designing the optical devices intended for the generalized protocol. Much of the importance of our work arises from the fact that the obtained QCC figures of merit allow direct comparison with the best-known classical multi-user fingerprinting protocol, of significance in the field of computer technologies and networking. Furthermore, as one of the main contributions of the manuscript, we deduce innovative analytical upper bounds on the amount of transmitted quantum information that are even valid in the two-user protocol as a particular case. These original analytical bounds are of interest for estimating the realistic protocol performance prior to experimental realizations. Ultimately, comparative results are provided to contrast different protocol implementation strategies and, importantly, to show that, under realistic circumstances, the multi-user protocol can achieve tasks that are impossible by using classical communication alone. Our work provides relevant contributions towards understanding the nature and the limitations of QF and, on a broader scope, also the limitations and possibilities of quantum-communication networks embracing a node that is accessed by multiple users at the same time.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/abc2e5

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arXiv:2502.13427•Feb 19, 2025•0 citations
Abstract Quantum communication has been leading the way of many remarkable theoretical results and experimental tests in physics. In this context, quantum communication complexity (QCC) has recently drawn earnest research attention as a tool to optimize the amounts of transmitted qubits and energy that are required to implement distributed computational tasks. On this matter, we introduce a novel multi-user quantum fingerprinting (QF) protocol that is ready to be implemented with existing technology. Particularly, we extend to the multi-user framework a well-known two-user coherent-state fingerprinting scheme. This generalization is highly non-trivial for a twofold reason, as it requires not only to extend the set of protocol rules but also to specify a procedure for designing the optical devices intended for the generalized protocol. Much of the importance of our work arises from the fact that the obtained QCC figures of merit allow direct comparison with the best-known classical multi-user fingerprinting protocol, of significance in the field of computer technologies and networking. Furthermore, as one of the main contributions of the manuscript, we deduce innovative analytical upper bounds on the amount of transmitted quantum information that are even valid in the two-user protocol as a particular case. These original analytical bounds are of interest for estimating the realistic protocol performance prior to experimental realizations. Ultimately, comparative results are provided to contrast different protocol implementation strategies and, importantly, to show that, under realistic circumstances, the multi-user protocol can achieve tasks that are impossible by using classical communication alone. Our work provides relevant contributions towards understanding the nature and the limitations of QF and, on a broader scope, also the limitations and possibilities of quantum-communication networks embracing a node that is accessed by multiple users at the same time.
Quantum fingerprinting (QF) promises exponential reduction of information transmission in executing communication complexity tasks. Practicality and quantum advantage of this novel protocol has been recently demonstrated using weak coherent pulses to carry the fingerprinting information. However, all coherent QF implementations rely upon a direct optical link to maintain coherence between the users, which does not comply with the protocol's rule that the users must not have any access to a shared randomness. To close this loophole, we propose, and experimentally demonstrate, a novel protocol based on asynchronous coincidence pairing from the interference result between coherent optical fields that are remotely and independently prepared. Over a length of 20 km telecom fiber, our QF setup has outperformed the best-known classical algorithm, for the first time without being susceptible to shared randomness. Our result paves the way toward practical applications of QF in communication complexity.
The work in this thesis can be divided into three parts. The first two parts deal with optical quantum communication protocols and the third part deals with quantum cryptography. The first part of the thesis is a step towards reformulating quantum protocols in terms of coherent states. Quantum communication protocols are typically formulated in terms of abstract qudit states and operations. This leaves the question of an experimental realization open. Direct translation of these protocols, say into single photons with some d-dimensional degree of freedom, are typically challenging to realize. Multi-mode coherent states, on the other hand, can be easily generated experimentally. Reformulation of protocols in terms of these states has been a successful strategy for implementation of quantum protocols. Quantum key distribution and the quantum fingerprinting protocol have both followed this route. In Chapter 3, we characterize the Gram matrices of multi-mode coherent states in an attempt to understand the class of communication protocols, which can be implemented using these states. We also derive the closure of the Gram matrices, which can be implemented in this way, so that we also characterize those matrices, which can be approximated arbitrarily well using multi-mode coherent states. \n \nIn the second part of the thesis, Chapter 4, we describe our collaboration with an experimental group to implement the quantum fingerprinting protocol and examine the tradeoffs between the resources required to implement such protocols. It is seen that it is difficult to implement the quantum fingerprinting protocol experimentally for large input sizes. This leads us to study the tradeoff between the two resources expended during optically implemented simultaneous message passing communication protocols: the duration of the protocol and the energy required to run it. We derive general bounds on the growth of these quantities which are valid for all optical protocols. We also develop tighter bounds for the growth of these resources for protocols implementing quantum fingerprinting with coherent states. \n \nFinally in Chapter 5, we venture into quantum cryptography. We introduce a new setting for two-party cryptography with temporarily trusted third parties. In this setting, in addition to Alice and Bob, there are third parties, which Alice and Bob both trust to be honest during the course of the protocol. However, once the protocol concludes, there is no guarantee over the behaviour of these third parties. It is possible that they collaborate and act adversarially against the honest parties. We implement a variant of bit commitment in this setting, which we call erasable bit commitment. In this primitive, Alice has the choice of either opening or erasing her commitment after the commit phase. The ability to ask for an erasure allows Alice to ask the trusted nodes to erase her commitment in case the trust period is about to expire. However, this ability also makes erasable bit commitment weaker than the standard version of bit commitment. In addition to satisfying the security requirements of bit commitment, our protocol also does not reveal any information about the commitment to the third parties. Lastly, our protocol for this primitive requires a constant number of trusted third parties and can tolerate a small number of dishonest trusted nodes as well as implementation errors.
Quantum fingerprinting allows two remote parties to determine whether their datasets are identical or different by sending exponentially less information compared to the classical protocol with equivalent performance. Optical implementations of the quantum protocol based on weak coherent states have been proposed and realized. However, in these realizations phase stability between the sending parties is required. Here we analyze the practical feasibility of the recently introduced quantum fingerprinting protocol based on higher-order interference, which does not require a phase lock between transmitters. We show that an experimental demonstration of a quantum fingerprinting protocol beating the known bound on the performance of classical schemes should be possible using currently available technology.
Quantum communication complexity explores the minimum amount of communication required to achieve certain tasks using quantum states. One representative example is quantum fingerprinting, in which the minimum amount of communication could be exponentially smaller than the classical fingerprinting. Here, we propose a quantum fingerprinting protocol where coherent states and channel multiplexing are used, with simultaneous detection of signals carried by multiple channels. Compared with an existing coherent quantum fingerprinting protocol, our protocol could consistently reduce communication time and the amount of communication by orders of magnitude by increasing the number of channels. Our proposed protocol can even beat the classical limit without using superconducting-nanowire single photon detectors. We also report a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration with six wavelength channels to validate the advantage of our protocol in the amount of communication. The experimental results clearly prove that our protocol not only surpasses the best-known classical protocol, but also remarkably outperforms the existing coherent quantum fingerprinting protocol.
The purpose of fingerprinting is to compare long messages with low communication complexity. Compared with its classical version, quantum fingerprinting can realize exponential reduction in communication complexity. Recently, multiparty quantum fingerprinting is studied to determine whether the messages from many parties are all the same. However, the complete relationships among them, including which ones are the same, are more general for future applications. Here, we propose the relationship state G\mathcal{G}G to describe all possible relationships among NNN messages. Based on this, we provide a general quantum fingerprinting network and then take the four-party quantum fingerprinting protocol as an example for detailed analysis. We take the full parameter optimization for the quantum fingerprinting protocol through asymmetric channel. The method of encoding more than one bit on each coherent state is used to further improve the performance of our protocol. Compared with other protocols, our protocol provides more relationships among different parties with only linear increase in communication complexity.
Buhrman, Cleve, Watrous, and de Wolf (PRL 2001) discovered the quantum fingerprinting protocol, which is the quantum SMP protocol with O(log⁡n)O(\log n)O(logn) qubits communication for the equality problem. In the protocol, Alice and Bob create some quantum fingerprints of their inputs, and the referee conducts the SWAP tests for the quantum fingerprints. Since Ω(n)Ω(\sqrt{n})Ω(n​) bits communication is required with the classical SMP scheme for the equality problem first shown by Newman and Szegedy (STOC 1996), there exists an exponential quantum advantage in the amount of communication. In this paper, we consider a setting in which the referee can do only incoherent measurements rather than coherent measurements including the SWAP tests. We first show that, in the case of one-way LOCC measurements, Ω(n)Ω(\sqrt{n})Ω(n​) qubits communication is required. To prove the result, we derive a new method to replace quantum messages by classical messages and consider a reduction to the optimal lower bound in the hybrid SMP model where one message is quantum and the other is classical, which was first shown by Klauck and Podder (MFCS 2014). Our method uses the result of Oszmaniec, Guerini, Wittek, and Acín (PRL 2017), who showed that general POVM measurements can be simulated by randomized projective measurements with small ancilla qubits, and Newman's theorem. We further investigate the setting of quantum SMP protocols with two-way LOCC measurements, and derive a lower bound against some restricted two-way LOCC measurements. To prove it, we revisit the technique to replace quantum messages by classical deterministic messages introduced by Aaronson (ToC 2005) and generalized by Gavinsky, Regev, and de Wolf (CJTCS 2008), and show that, using the deterministic message, the referee can simulate the two-way LOCC measurements.