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arXiv:2606.29325

Generic Number-of-Copies Amplification for Pseudorandom States

Zvika Brakerski, Miri Zenilman

quant-phcs.CRSubmitted Jun 28, 2026• Announced Jun 30, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We show that any quantum pseudorandom state that is secure against single-copy distinguishers, i.e. a $1$-PRS, can be amplified to $t$-copy security, i.e. to a $t$-PRS, without additional assumptions, for any polynomial $t$ in the security parameter. Prior work (Ananth and Goldin, arXiv 2025) was only able to show this for a restricted class of $1$-PRS constructions, namely ones whose generators only use a small number of ancilla qubits. Technically, we show that by carefully accounting for the randomness that is used in the construction, and using quantum extractors, it is possible to eliminate an ancilla register of any length and obtain a meaningful $t$-PRS outcome.

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Efficient Quantum Pseudorandomness from Hamiltonian Phase States

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•Jan 1, 2025•2 citations
We show that any quantum pseudorandom state that is secure against single-copy distinguishers, i.e. a 111-PRS, can be amplified to ttt-copy security, i.e. to a ttt-PRS, without additional assumptions, for any polynomial ttt in the security parameter. Prior work (Ananth and Goldin, arXiv 2025) was only able to show this for a restricted class of 111-PRS constructions, namely ones whose generators only use a small number of ancilla qubits. Technically, we show that by carefully accounting for the randomness that is used in the construction, and using quantum extractors, it is possible to eliminate an ancilla register of any length and obtain a meaningful ttt-PRS outcome.
Pseudorandom states, introduced by Ji, Liu, and Song (CRYPTO 2018), are quantum analogues of classical pseudorandom generators. A fundamental property of classical pseudorandom generators is that their output can be stretched to arbitrary polynomial length. Whether an analogous stretching property holds for quantum pseudorandom states has been elusive. Here, we essentially resolve this question for the single-copy variant of pseudorandom states, 1PRS. We show, via a unitary oracle separation, that no fully black-box construction can stretch the output length of a 1PRS by any constant factor greater than one.
Pseudorandom Quantum States (PRS) were introduced by Ji, Liu and Song as quantum analogous to Pseudorandom Generators. They are an ensemble of states efficiently computable but computationally indistinguishable from Haar random states. Subsequent works have shown that some cryptographic primitives can be constructed from PRSs. Moreover, recent classical and quantum oracle separations of PRS from One-Way Functions strengthen the interest in a purely quantum alternative building block for quantum cryptography, potentially weaker than OWFs. However, our lack of knowledge of extending or shrinking the number of qubits of the PRS output still makes it difficult to reproduce some of the classical proof techniques and results. Short-PRSs, that is PRSs with logarithmic size output, have been introduced in the literature along with cryptographic applications, but we still do not know how they relate to PRSs. Here we answer half of the question, by showing that it is not possible to shrink the output of a PRS from polynomial to logarithmic qubit length while still preserving the pseudorandomness property, in a relativized way. More precisely, we show that relative to Kretschmer's quantum oracle (TQC 2021) short-PRSs cannot exist (while PRSs exist, as shown by Kretschmer's work).
Pseudorandom states (PRS) are an important primitive in quantum cryptography. In this paper, we show that subset states can be used to construct PRSs. A subset state with respect to SSS, a subset of the computational basis, is 1∣S∣∑i∈S∣i⟩. \frac{1}{\sqrt{|S|}}\sum_{i\in S} |i\rangle. ∣S∣​1​∑i∈S​∣i⟩. As a technical centerpiece, we show that for any fixed subset size ∣S∣=s|S|=s∣S∣=s such that s=2n/ω(poly(n))s = 2^n/ω(\mathrm{poly}(n))s=2n/ω(poly(n)) and s=ω(poly(n))s=ω(\mathrm{poly}(n))s=ω(poly(n)), where nnn is the number of qubits, a random subset state is information-theoretically indistinguishable from a Haar random state even provided with polynomially many copies. This range of parameter is tight. Our work resolves a conjecture by Ji, Liu and Song. Since subset states of small size have small entanglement across all cuts, this construction also illustrates a pseudoentanglement phenomenon.
We propose the concept of pseudorandom states and study their constructions, properties, and applications. Under the assumption that quantum-secure one-way functions exist, we present concrete and efficient constructions of pseudorandom states. The non-cloning theorem plays a central role in our study---it motivates the proper definition and characterizes one of the important properties of pseudorandom quantum states. Namely, there is no efficient quantum algorithm that can create more copies of the state from a given number of pseudorandom states. As the main application, we prove that any family of pseudorandom states naturally gives rise to a private-key quantum money scheme.
Quantum pseudorandomness has found applications in many areas of quantum information, ranging from entanglement theory, to models of scrambling phenomena in chaotic quantum systems, and, more recently, in the foundations of quantum cryptography. Kretschmer (TQC '21) showed that both pseudorandom states and pseudorandom unitaries exist even in a world without classical one-way functions. To this day, however, all known constructions require classical cryptographic building blocks which are themselves synonymous with the existence of one-way functions, and which are also challenging to realize on realistic quantum hardware. In this work, we seek to make progress on both of these fronts simultaneously -- by decoupling quantum pseudorandomness from classical cryptography altogether. We introduce a quantum hardness assumption called the Hamiltonian Phase State (HPS) problem, which is the task of decoding output states of a random instantaneous quantum polynomial-time (IQP) circuit. Hamiltonian phase states can be generated very efficiently using only Hadamard gates, single-qubit Z-rotations and CNOT circuits. We show that the hardness of our problem reduces to a worst-case version of the problem, and we provide evidence that our assumption is plausibly fully quantum; meaning, it cannot be used to construct one-way functions. We also show information-theoretic hardness when only few copies of HPS are available by proving an approximate ttt-design property of our ensemble. Finally, we show that our HPS assumption and its variants allow us to efficiently construct many pseudorandom quantum primitives, ranging from pseudorandom states, to quantum pseudoentanglement, to pseudorandom unitaries, and even primitives such as public-key encryption with quantum keys.
Quantum pseudorandomness has found applications in many areas of quantum information, ranging from entanglement theory, to models of scrambling phenomena in chaotic quantum systems, and, more recently, in the foundations of quantum cryptography. Kretschmer (TQC '21) showed that both pseudorandom states and pseudorandom unitaries exist even in a world without classical one-way functions. To this day, however, all known constructions require classical cryptographic building blocks which are themselves synonymous with the existence of one-way functions, and which are also challenging to implement on realistic quantum hardware. In this work, we seek to make progress on both of these fronts simultaneously - by decoupling quantum pseudorandomness from classical cryptography altogether. We introduce a quantum hardness assumption called the Hamiltonian Phase State (HPS) problem, which is the task of decoding output states of a random instantaneous quantum polynomial-time (IQP) circuit. Hamiltonian phase states can be generated very efficiently using only Hadamard gates, single-qubit Z rotations and CNOT circuits. We show that the hardness of our problem reduces to a worst-case version of the problem, and we provide evidence that our assumption is plausibly fully quantum; meaning, it cannot be used to construct one-way functions. We also show information-theoretic hardness when only few copies of HPS are available by proving an approximate t-design property of our ensemble. Finally, we show that our HPS assumption and its variants allow us to efficiently construct many pseudorandom quantum primitives, ranging from pseudorandom states, to quantum pseudoentanglement, to pseudorandom unitaries, and even primitives such as public-key encryption with quantum keys.