Quantum secret sharing is a cryptographic scheme that enables the secure storage and reconstruction of quantum information. While the theory of secret sharing is mature in its development, relatively few studies have explored the performance of quantum secret sharing on actual devices. In this work, we provide a pedagogical description of encoding and decoding circuits for different secret sharing codes, and we test their performance on IBM’s 127-qubit Brisbane system. We evaluate the quality of the implementation by performing a SWAP test between the decoded state and the ideal one, as well as by estimating how well the code preserves entanglement with a reference system. The results indicate that a ((3,5)) threshold secret sharing scheme and a non-threshold 7-qubit scheme perform similarly based on the SWAP test and entanglement fidelity, with both attaining a roughly 70–75% pass rate on the SWAP test for the reconstructed secret. We also investigate one implementation of a ((2,3)) qutrit threshold scheme and find that it performs the worst of all, which is expected due to the additional number of multi-qubit gate operations needed to encode and decode qutrits. A comparison is also made between schemes using mid-circuit measurement versus delayed-circuit measurement.
Quantum secret sharing is a cryptographic scheme that enables the secure storage and reconstruction of quantum information. While the theory of secret sharing is mature in its development, relatively few studies have explored the performance of quantum secret sharing on actual devices. In this work, we provide a pedagogical description of encoding and decoding circuits for different secret sharing codes, and we test their performance on IBM’s 127-qubit Brisbane system. We evaluate the quality of the implementation by performing a SWAP test between the decoded state and the ideal one, as well as by estimating how well the code preserves entanglement with a reference system. The results indicate that a ((3,5)) threshold secret sharing scheme and a non-threshold 7-qubit scheme perform similarly based on the SWAP test and entanglement fidelity, with both attaining a roughly 70–75% pass rate on the SWAP test for the reconstructed secret. We also investigate one implementation of a ((2,3)) qutrit threshold scheme and find that it performs the worst of all, which is expected due to the additional number of multi-qubit gate operations needed to encode and decode qutrits. A comparison is also made between schemes using mid-circuit measurement versus delayed-circuit measurement.
Secret sharing of a quantum state, or quantum secret sharing, in which a dealer wants to share certain amount of quantum information with a few players, has wide applications in quantum information.The critical criterion in a threshold secret sharing scheme is confidentiality; with less than the designated number of players, no information can be recovered.Furthermore, in a quantum scenario, one additional critical criterion exists; the capability of sharing entangled and unknown quantum information.Here by employing a six-photon entangled state, we demonstrate a quantum threshold scheme, where the shared quantum secrecy can be efficiently reconstructed with a state fidelity as high as 93%.By observing that any one or two parties cannot recover the secrecy, we show that our scheme meets the confidentiality criterion.Meanwhile, we also demonstrate that entangled quantum information can be shared and recovered via our setting, which demonstrates that our implemented scheme is fully quantum.Moreover, our experimental setup can be treated as a decoding circuit of the 5-qubit quantum error-correcting code with two erasure errors.
Secret sharing of a quantum state, or quantum secret sharing, in which a dealer wants to share a certain amount of quantum information with a few players, has wide applications in quantum information. The critical criterion in a threshold secret sharing scheme is confidentiality: with less than the designated number of players, no information can be recovered. Furthermore, in a quantum scenario, one additional critical criterion exists: the capability of sharing entangled and unknown quantum information. Here, by employing a six-photon entangled state, we demonstrate a quantum threshold scheme, where the shared quantum secrecy can be efficiently reconstructed with a state fidelity as high as 93%. By observing that any one or two parties cannot recover the secrecy, we show that our scheme meets the confidentiality criterion. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate that entangled quantum information can be shared and recovered via our setting, which shows that our implemented scheme is fully quantum. Moreover, our experimental setup can be treated as a decoding circuit of the five-qubit quantum error-correcting code with two erasure errors.
Quantum Secret Sharing (QSS) employs the principles of quantum entanglement to securely distribute confidential information among multiple participants, such that the original secret can only be recovered through collaboration among an authorized subset of users. While QSS offers information-theoretic security independent of computational assumptions, its practical deployment on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) hardware remains challenging. The presence of device imperfections, including gate errors, decoherence, and measurement inaccuracies, adversely affects quantum state fidelity and reduces the reliability of secret reconstruction during protocol execution. This paper presents a noise-resilient multiparty QSS framework integrating a (2,3)- threshold Shamir Secret Sharing scheme over Galois Field GF (8) with nine-qubit Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) entanglement circuits, fully implemented on the IBM ibm_kingston 156-qubit Heron r2 quantum processor. A three-phase experimental methodology is adopted: noiseless simulation via Qiskit Aer, authentic hardware execution with 1024 measurement shots, and a combined Local Readout Error Mitigation (LRE) and Zero Noise Extrapolation (ZNE) pipeline. Across 24 participants in eight secret-sharing sessions, hardware noise introduced a 6.0% accuracy degradation relative to the ideal baseline, which the LRE+ZNE pipeline substantially recovered. The (2,3)-threshold security invariant was preserved throughout all phases, with singleplayer reconstruction rates held at exactly 0.000, well below the 12.5% random-guess baseline. Security is further reinforced through CRYSTALS-Kyber512 (NIST FIPS 203) post-quantum authentication, SHA-256 share commitments, SHA3-256 fairness verification, and bulletin board consensus, with verified resistance against seven attack categories. Results confirm that reliable hardware-validated QSS on current NISQ devices is achievable through systematic multi-technique error mitigation.
A (k,n)-threshold secret-sharing scheme allows for a string to be split into n shares in such a way that any subset of at least k shares suffices to recover the secret string, but such that any subset of at most $k\ensuremath{-}1$ shares contains no information about the secret. Quantum secret-sharing schemes extend this idea to the sharing of quantum states. Here we propose a method of performing computation securely on quantum shared secrets. We introduce a (n,n)-quantum secret sharing scheme together with a set of algorithms that allow quantum circuits to be evaluated securely on the shared secret without the need to decode the secret. We consider a multipartite setting, with each participant holding a share of the secret. We show that if there exists at least one honest participant, no group of dishonest participants can recover any information about the shared secret, independent of their deviations from the algorithm.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS), as a quantum extension of classical secret sharing, uses the basic principles of quantum mechanics to share information safely among multiple parties, providing a new paradigm for information security. As a key foundation for secure multiparty quantum communication and distributed quantum computing, QSS has attracted considerable attention since its emergence. Currently, research in this field includes both classical and quantum scenarios, and continuous progress has been made in both theoretical and experimental aspects. This paper first reviews the current development of QSS for classical information. In this regard, significant and parallel progress has been made in both discrete-variable QSS and continuous-variable QSS. The QSS protocols for sharing classical information, from entangled states to single photons and then to coherent light, have been continuously optimized to better utilize available resources and achieve more efficient implementation under current technological conditions. Meanwhile, round-robin, measurement-device-independent, and other protocols have been steadily improving the security of QSS. Next, one will focus on QSS scheme for quantum secrets, which begins with the symmetry of access structures and introduces basic (k, n) threshold protocols, dynamic schemes that support adaptive agent groups, and symmetric quantum information splitting through entanglement. It further introduces hierarchical quantum secret sharing schemes for asymmetric splitting of quantum information. Considering practical laboratory conditions of quantum states as resources, an overall discussion is conducted on quantum secret sharing with graph states. Afterwards, the design of a continuous-variable scheme for quantum secret sharing is outlined, and entanglement state sharing and quantum teleportation between multiple senders and receivers are introduced. Finally, this review discusses and outlines the future development directions of QSS, thereby inspiring readers to further study and explore the relevant subjects.
Quantum secret sharing(QSS) is a procedure of sharing classical information or quantum information by using quantum states. This paper presents how to use a [2 k − 1, 1, k ] quantum error-correcting code (QECC) to implement a quantum ( k , 2 k − 1) threshold scheme. It also takes advantage of classical enhancement of the [2 k − 1, 1, k ] QECC to establish a QSS scheme which can share classical information and quantum information simultaneously. Because information is encoded into QECC, these schemes can prevent intercept-resend attacks and be implemented on some noisy channels.