Non-local quantum computation (NLQC) is a cheating strategy for position-verification schemes, and has appeared in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here, we connect NLQC to the wider context of information theoretic cryptography by relating it to a number of other cryptographic primitives. We show one special case of NLQC, known as f -routing, is equivalent to the quantum analogue of the conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive, where by equivalent we mean that a protocol for one task gives a protocol for the other with only small overhead in resource costs. We further consider another special case of position-verification, which we call coherent function evaluation (CFE), and show CFE protocols induce similarly efficient protocols for the private simultaneous message passing (PSM) scenario. By relating position-verification to these cryptographic primitives, a number of results in the information theoretic cryptography literature give new implications for NLQC, and vice versa. These include the first sub-exponential upper bounds on the worst case cost of f -routing of 2 O ( n log n ) entanglement, the first example of an efficient f -routing strategy for a problem believed to be outside P / p o l y , linear lower bounds on quantum resources for CDS in the quantum setting, linear lower bounds on communication cost of CFE, and efficient protocols for CDS in the quantum setting for functions that can be computed with quantum circuits of low T depth.
Non-local quantum computation (NLQC) is a cheating strategy for position-verification schemes, and has appeared in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here, we connect NLQC to the wider context of information theoretic cryptography by relating it to a number of other cryptographic primitives. We show one special case of NLQC, known as f -routing, is equivalent to the quantum analogue of the conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive, where by equivalent we mean that a protocol for one task gives a protocol for the other with only small overhead in resource costs. We further consider another special case of position-verification, which we call coherent function evaluation (CFE), and show CFE protocols induce similarly efficient protocols for the private simultaneous message passing (PSM) scenario. By relating position-verification to these cryptographic primitives, a number of results in the information theoretic cryptography literature give new implications for NLQC, and vice versa. These include the first sub-exponential upper bounds on the worst case cost of f -routing of 2 O ( n log n ) entanglement, the first example of an efficient f -routing strategy for a problem believed to be outside P / p o l y , linear lower bounds on quantum resources for CDS in the quantum setting, linear lower bounds on communication cost of CFE, and efficient protocols for CDS in the quantum setting for functions that can be computed with quantum circuits of low T depth.
A non-local quantum computation (NLQC) replaces an interaction between two quantum systems with a single simultaneous round of communication and shared entanglement. We study two classes of NLQC, f-routing and f-BB84, which are of relevance to classical information theoretic cryptography and quantum position-verification. We give the first non-trivial lower bounds on entanglement in both settings, but are restricted to lower bounding protocols with perfect correctness. Within this setting, we give a lower bound on the Schmidt rank of any entangled state that completes these tasks for a given function f(x,y) in terms of the rank of a matrix g(x,y) whose entries are zero when f(x,y) = 0, and strictly positive otherwise. This also leads to a lower bound on the Schmidt rank in terms of the non-deterministic quantum communication complexity of f(x,y). Because of a relationship between f-routing and the conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive studied in information theoretic cryptography, we obtain a new technique for lower bounding the randomness complexity of CDS.
New lower bounds for CDS and f-routing
Understanding the entanglement cost of non-local quantum computation (NLQC) is relevant to complexity theory, cryptography, quantum gravity, and other areas. A central special case is f-routing, motivated in part by quantum position verification. Proving lower bounds on its entanglement cost in the fully robust setting has been a major open problem in NLQC.
Motivated by this problem, we establish two related lower bounds. First, we study the shared-randomness cost of robust conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS). The connection between CDS and f-routing established by Allerstorfer et al. (Quantum 2024) makes understanding the randomness complexity of robust CDS a natural step toward lower bounds for the fully robust routing problem. We show that the shared-randomness cost of robust CDS is lower bounded by the logarithm of deterministic SMP communication complexity, even when communication and private randomness are unrestricted. Our lower bound is tight for the equality function.
Second, we consider one-sided-perfect f-routing, in which the protocol is exact on one input class and has constant error on the other. By exploiting the positivity of the low-rank matrix in the method of Asadi, Culf, and May (ITCS 2025), we derive a lower bound on the entanglement cost in terms of sign rank. In particular, this yields a linear lower bound on the entanglement cost of routing for the inner-product function in both one-sided-perfect settings, matching the known upper bound.
A non-local quantum computation (NLQC) replaces an interaction between two quantum systems with a single simultaneous round of communication and shared entanglement. We study two classes of NLQC, f-routing and f-BB84, which are of relevance to classical information theoretic cryptography and quantum position-verification. We give the first non-trivial lower bounds on entanglement in both settings, but are restricted to lower bounding protocols with perfect correctness. Within this setting, we give a lower bound on the Schmidt rank of any entangled state that completes these tasks for a given function f(x,y) in terms of the rank of a matrix g(x,y) whose entries are zero when f(x,y)=0, and strictly positive otherwise. This also leads to a lower bound on the Schmidt rank in terms of the non-deterministic quantum communication complexity of f(x,y). Because of a relationship between f-routing and the conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive studied in information theoretic cryptography, we obtain a new technique for lower bounding the randomness complexity of CDS.
Non-local quantum computation (NLQC) studies how two collaborating players can implement channels on distributed systems using a single simultaneous round of quantum communication and shared entanglement. NLQC has applications in diverse areas, ranging from quantum position-verification to quantum gravity. Recently, it has been realized that the relationships among families of NLQC tasks are highly structured: many seemingly distinct tasks are related by reductions, wherein implementations of one task can be used to efficiently implement a second task. This is analogous to the notion of reduction in complexity theory, and reveals the relative hardness of NLQC tasks. In this work we continue the study of reductions among NLQC tasks. We focus on NLQC examples of the greatest interest in quantum position-verification; in particular examples involving large classical inputs and fixed-size quantum inputs, since these constitute the most feasible protocols for position-verification schemes. Within this setting, we find many new relationships among NLQC tasks. For instance, protocols for the simplest example of redirecting a quantum system based on a classical control imply protocols for controlled single qubit measurements in arbitrary bases, the controlled application of any Clifford unitary, and even the controlled application of any unitary of the form U=C1DC0 with D an arbitrary diagonal unitary and C0,C1 Clifford circuits. This implies that many feasible position-verification schemes have the same asymptotic scaling for their entanglement cost, and hence a similar level of security. Our techniques rely on ideas from gate teleportation and measurement based quantum computation, among other areas, bringing several new strategies into NLQC which may be of independent interest.
This is a book-length treatment of the subject of non-local quantum computation (NLQC). NLQC is a method for implementing quantum operations that interact two systems without directly bringing the systems together. Instead, a single round of communication and shared entanglement is used. NLQC has appeared in the context of quantum cryptography, computational complexity, communication complexity, quantum gravity, and other applications. The understanding of entanglement cost in NLQC is closely tied to questions in all of these areas. We review upper and lower bounds on entanglement cost, as well as some of the applications of NLQC and its connections to other subjects.
The conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive is among the simplest cryptographic settings in which to study the relationship between communication, randomness, and security. CDS involves two parties, Alice and Bob, who do not communicate but who wish to reveal a secret z to a referee if and only if a Boolean function f has f ( x , y ) = 1 . Alice knows x , z , Bob knows y , and the referee knows x , y . Recently, a quantum analogue of this primitive called CDQS was defined and related to f -routing, a task studied in the context of quantum position-verification. CDQS has the same inputs, outputs, and communication pattern as CDS but allows the use of shared entanglement and quantum messages. We initiate the systematic study of CDQS, with the aim of better understanding the relationship between privacy and quantum resources in the information theoretic setting. We begin by looking for quantum analogues of results already established in the classical CDS literature. Doing so we establish a number of basic properties of CDQS, including lower bounds on entanglement and communication stated in terms of measures of communication complexity. Because of the close relationship to the f -routing position-verification scheme, our results have relevance to the security of these schemes.