Private simultaneous quantum messages (PSQM) provide a minimal model of noninteractive secure multiparty quantum computation, yet their communication complexity for concrete functions remains poorly understood. We show that familiar total functions already exhibit both genuine quantum advantages and strong structural limitations. For three-party equality on $n$-bit inputs, which determines whether the players' $n$-bit strings are identical, we construct an entanglement-assisted protocol with asymptotic communication $(1.633\ldots)n$ qubits, whereas every perfectly correct protocol without prior entanglement requires at least $3n$ qubits. For three-bit majority, one shared GHZ state and one transmitted qubit per player suffice for perfect correctness and perfect privacy, reducing the communication from the optimal classical cost of six bits to three qubits. Three-bit AND behaves differently. No perfectly correct and perfectly private protocol exists when the players share an arbitrary three-qubit state, apply arbitrary local unitary encodings, and transmit one qubit each. However, increasing the local dimension overcomes this obstruction: one shared three-qutrit GHZ state and one transmitted qutrit per player yield a one-shot protocol with total communication $3\log_2 3$. Together with the six-bit classical lower bound, this gives a strict quantum communication advantage. More generally, for every $k\geq 3$, we construct a perfectly correct and perfectly private one-shot protocol for $k$-bit AND using one qudit of dimension at most $k$ per player, and hence at most $k\log_2 k$ qubits in total.
Private simultaneous quantum messages (PSQM) provide a minimal model of noninteractive secure multiparty quantum computation, yet their communication complexity for concrete functions remains poorly understood. We show that familiar total functions already exhibit both genuine quantum advantages and strong structural limitations. For three-party equality on n-bit inputs, which determines whether the players' n-bit strings are identical, we construct an entanglement-assisted protocol with asymptotic communication (1.633…)n qubits, whereas every perfectly correct protocol without prior entanglement requires at least 3n qubits. For three-bit majority, one shared GHZ state and one transmitted qubit per player suffice for perfect correctness and perfect privacy, reducing the communication from the optimal classical cost of six bits to three qubits. Three-bit AND behaves differently. No perfectly correct and perfectly private protocol exists when the players share an arbitrary three-qubit state, apply arbitrary local unitary encodings, and transmit one qubit each. However, increasing the local dimension overcomes this obstruction: one shared three-qutrit GHZ state and one transmitted qutrit per player yield a one-shot protocol with total communication 3log23. Together with the six-bit classical lower bound, this gives a strict quantum communication advantage. More generally, for every k≥3, we construct a perfectly correct and perfectly private one-shot protocol for k-bit AND using one qudit of dimension at most k per player, and hence at most klog2k qubits in total.
In the private simultaneous message (PSM) setting, k players obtain inputs xi∈{0,1}n and then each send messages to a referee, who should learn f(x1,...,xk) but no other information about (x1,...,xk). The PSM setting was introduced as a minimal model for secure multiparty computation and has connections to Boolean function complexity. In the quantum setting, PSM has been related to non-local quantum computation (NLQC). The communication and correlation cost of implementing PSM remains poorly understood. Here, we give new upper and lower bounds on the (quantum) PSM model. For lower bounds, we show: 1) Nečiporuk's measure lower bounds the entanglement required for k-player quantum PSM with perfect correctness. This leads to quadratic lower bounds for explicit functions. 2) The rank of the communication matrix of f(x1,x2) lower bounds 2-player quantum PSM with perfect privacy but imperfect correctness. This implies a previously unknown lower bound on classical PSM with imperfect correctness. When allowing quantum communication and shared entanglement, these are the first lower bounds on quantum PSM that make use of the privacy condition. For upper bounds, we show: 1) Letting s be the size of a quantum circuit computing f, df be the circuit depth, k the number of players, n the number of bits received by each player, and ε a correctness parameter, we obtain PSMk∗(f)≤(kn+s)⋅logO(df)(s/ε). 2) The square of the Fourier 1 norm of f, ∥f^∥12, upper bounds the classical PSM complexity, PSM(f)≤O(∥f^∥12). In proving the first upper bound, we generalize existing T-depth based techniques for NLQC from 2 to k≥2 parties, and consider cases where the Clifford layers are restricted to having small light cones.
We study the relative power of public randomness and quantum communication in the multiparty Simultaneous Message Passing (SMP) model. By analyzing a total Boolean function and a relational problem, we establish polynomial and exponential separations between classical public-coin protocols and quantum protocols without shared randomness or prior entanglement.
We first introduce XOR Equality, a total Boolean function in which each of k players receives an unrestricted string xj∈{0,1}n, and the referee must decide whether x1⊕⋯⊕xk=0n. For k≥8 and worst-case error at most 1/3, we prove quantum lower bounds of Ω(min{n,k2}) on total communication and Ω(min{n/k,k}) on maximum message length. A classical public-coin protocol uses two bits per player with error at most 1/4. For n=k2 and worst-case error at most 1/3, we prove that quantum protocols require maximum message length Ω(n) qubits, whereas two public-coin bits per player suffice.
We then turn to relations, for which we obtain exponential separations. Specifically, we study Multiparty Index Coordination, a k-player generalization of the two-player relation studied by Gavinsky, Kempe, Regev, and de Wolf (STOC 2006). We prove an unambiguous quantum lower bound of Ω(n1−1/k) on maximum message length, matched by a classical private-coin protocol. For any fixed error ε∈(0,1/8), we also prove a bounded-error quantum lower bound of Ω(n(k−1)/(k+1)) while we show that public-coin protocols solve the relation unambiguously with maximum message length O(logn), giving exponential separations in both regimes. The implicit constants are independent of k, and both quantum lower bounds become linear when k≥clogn for any fixed c>0.
We study the complexity of quantum decomposable randomized encodings (QDRE). We establish a bi-directional connection between the QDRE model and the communication complexity model of quantum private simultaneous message protocols (QPSM), where classical communication is free, and quantum communication is the primary complexity measure. We show the following upper and lower bounds. (1) For every quantum channel mapping n to m qubits, we give a QPSM protocol with quantum communication m, using exponential pre-shared entanglement. In particular, constant-output channels have O(1) quantum communication, and classical-output channels require no quantum communication. (2) With O(n) pre-shared entanglement, every one-qubit-output channel has an O(n)-quantum-communication QPSM protocol. Conversely, there exists a channel and a constant c>0 for which any protocol with at most cn pre-shared entanglement requires Ω(n) quantum communication. (3) In contrast, we identify a structured class of quantum channels, Clifford-induced channels, for which there exist QPSM protocols with O(n) pre-shared entangled qubits and only O(1) quantum communication complexity. Through our connection, we obtain analogous upper and lower bounds on the quantum encoding size of QDRE. Our results show that the amount of pre-shared entanglement plays a central role in quantum encoding size and quantum communication complexity.
Private Simultaneous Messages (PSM) is a minimal model for secure computation, where two parties, Alice and Bob, have private inputs x,y and a shared random string. Each of them sends a single message to an external party, Charlie, who can compute f(x,y) for a public function f but learns nothing else. The problem of narrowing the gap between upper and lower bounds on the communication complexity of PSM has been widely studied, but the gap still remains exponential. In this work, we study the communication complexity of PSM from a different perspective and introduce a special class of PSM, referred to as ideal PSM, in which each party’s message length attains the minimum, that is, their messages are taken from the same domain as inputs. We initiate a systematic study of ideal PSM with a complete characterization, several positive results, and applications. First, we provide a characterization of the class of functions that admit ideal PSM, based on permutation groups acting on the input domain. This characterization allows us to derive asymptotic upper bounds on the total number of such functions and a complete list for small domains. We also present several infinite families of functions of practical interest that admit ideal PSM. Interestingly, by simply restricting the input domains of these ideal PSM schemes, we can recover most of the existing PSM schemes that achieve the best known communication complexity in various computation models. As applications, we show that these ideal PSM schemes yield novel communication-efficient PSM schemes for functions with sparse or dense truth-tables and those with low-rank truth-tables. Furthermore, we obtain a PSM scheme for general functions that improves the constant factor in the dominant term of the best known communication complexity. An additional advantage is that our scheme simplifies the existing construction by avoiding the hierarchical design of internally invoking PSM schemes for smaller functions.
We introduce information-theoretically private quantum protocols for two-party Hamming distance when both parties must output the same estimate. Classically, for input length n, information-theoretic protocols require Ω(n) error under pure differential privacy and Ω(n/logn) error under strong approximate differential privacy, whereas computational security permits O(1) error. In Klauck's honest, nonpreemptive, message-preserving model, we give an O(n)-communication quantum protocol with pure ε quantum differential privacy (QDP) and expected error at most sinhε2+γ, for every γ>0. For approximate (ε,δ) QDP, an exact hockey-stick divergence calculation yields strictly smaller error, while preserving the O(1)-versus-Ω(n/logn) separation for δ=o(1/n). Thus, quantum communication achieves O(1) information-theoretic error, matching the accuracy available classically only under computational assumptions.
The main construction uses a guarded coherent round trip and an equal-Gram rigidity principle that prevents an honest player from retaining input-dependent complementary information. We separate this model from weaker prescribed-channel privacy, which already admits an exact classical realization, and from fully retention-robust security, against which measurement-and-abort attacks remain possible. Therefore, we identify preservation of non-orthogonal quantum messages as a resource for privacy.
We investigate the quantum advantage that can arise in typical two-party communication scenarios, where the sender and the receiver are allowed to share prior correlations. Focusing on communication tasks constrained by the distinguishability of the sender's inputs, we demonstrate that entanglement-assisted communication with both classical and quantum message can outperform classical communication supplemented with shared randomness. We begin by developing a general framework for communication tasks with pre-shared correlations. Within this framework, we establish an equivalence among entanglement-assisted classical communication, entanglement-assisted quantum communication, and quantum communication, showing that no hierarchy exists between these three paradigms. We then investigate the scenario where the receiver has no input and prove that no advantage can arise in this case. However, an advantage in the entanglement-assisted setting emerges once additional constraints are imposed on the dimension of the communicated message. This further highlights the superiority of entanglement-assisted classical communication over standard quantum communication. Then we demonstrate several tasks where the entanglement-assisted protocol using one-bit communication proves to be advantageous over classical communication. Finally, by constructing an explicit class of communication tasks, we show that a non-maximally entangled states outperform the maximally entangled state as a pre-shared resource between the communicating parties.