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Enforcing trust in quantum networks

Anupama Unnikrishnan

Published Jan 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The phenomenal progress in quantum technologies over the past decades has laid the groundwork for the construction of quantum networks, which will channel the power of quantum theory to guarantee secure and efficient communication, computation, and much more. This thesis studies the notion of trust in quantum networks. In our information age, protecting the security or anonymity of data is a key requirement. We investigate certain protocols that are fundamental to the operation and applications of quantum networks, and propose ways to test and analyse their security, in spite of adversarial intervention. Our focus is on practical methods of verifying the untrusted components, which could be incorporated into realistic networks in the near future. To begin, we propose a protocol for authenticated communication of quantum messages, by verifying the entanglement required for quantum teleportation in an experimentally feasible way. We model the performance of our scheme in the presence of noise. Furthermore, we explore such an authenticated teleportation in the one-sided device-independent scenario, where some devices used for verification may be corrupted. We derive error-tolerant self- testing bounds and extend our results to a realistic experimental setting, demonstrating the compatibility of our protocol with state-of-the-art technology. We then study anonymity, an essential feature for communication across networks. Combining the power of classical and quantum subroutines, we build a practical protocol for anonymous communication of quantum messages, without the need to trust the players in our network, their computational power, or the entanglement they share. We end by considering the verification of graph states distributed across a network of possibly dishonest players, applying our scheme to specific graph states that are central to quantum communication and computation schemes.

DOI
10.5287/ora-yrxrba4ya

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The phenomenal progress in quantum technologies over the past decades has laid the groundwork for the construction of quantum networks, which will channel the power of quantum theory to guarantee secure and efficient communication, computation, and much more. This thesis studies the notion of trust in quantum networks. In our information age, protecting the security or anonymity of data is a key requirement. We investigate certain protocols that are fundamental to the operation and applications of quantum networks, and propose ways to test and analyse their security, in spite of adversarial intervention. Our focus is on practical methods of verifying the untrusted components, which could be incorporated into realistic networks in the near future. To begin, we propose a protocol for authenticated communication of quantum messages, by verifying the entanglement required for quantum teleportation in an experimentally feasible way. We model the performance of our scheme in the presence of noise. Furthermore, we explore such an authenticated teleportation in the one-sided device-independent scenario, where some devices used for verification may be corrupted. We derive error-tolerant self- testing bounds and extend our results to a realistic experimental setting, demonstrating the compatibility of our protocol with state-of-the-art technology. We then study anonymity, an essential feature for communication across networks. Combining the power of classical and quantum subroutines, we build a practical protocol for anonymous communication of quantum messages, without the need to trust the players in our network, their computational power, or the entanglement they share. We end by considering the verification of graph states distributed across a network of possibly dishonest players, applying our scheme to specific graph states that are central to quantum communication and computation schemes.
Authenticated teleportation aims to certify the transmission of a quantum state through teleportation, even in the presence of an adversary. This scenario can be pictured in terms of an untrusted source distributing a Bell state between two parties who wish to verify it using some simple tests. We propose a protocol that achieves this goal in a practical way and analyze its performance and security when the parties have noisy measurement devices. Further, we model a realistic experimental scenario where the state is subject to noise. We finally apply our analysis to the verification of graph states with noisy measurement devices.
We introduce a protocol for authenticated teleportation, which can be proven secure even when the receiver does not trust his or her measurement devices, and which is experimentally accessible. We use the technique of self-testing from the device-independent approach to quantum information, where we can characterize quantum states and measurements from the exhibited classical correlations alone. First, we derive self-testing bounds for the Bell state and Pauli ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{X},{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{Z}$ measurements, that are robust enough to be implemented in the laboratory. Then, we use these to determine a lower bound on the fidelity of an untested entangled state to be used for teleportation. Finally, we apply our results to propose a protocol for one-sided device-independent authenticated teleportation that is experimentally feasible in both the number of copies and fidelities required. This can be interpreted as a practical authentication of a quantum channel, with additional one-sided device independence.
Anonymity is a fundamental cryptographic primitive that hides the identities of both senders and receivers during message transmission over a network. Classical protocols cannot provide information-theoretic security for such task, and existing quantum approaches typically depend on classical subroutines and multiple private channels, thereby weakening their security in fully adversarial settings. In this work, we introduce the first fully quantum protocol for anonymous communication in realistic quantum networks with a device-independent security proof.
Quantum network is a trending internet technology that exploits quantum mechanics principles to allow the communication between distant users. When a message is transmitted through a quantum network, guaranteeing the anonymity of a sender and a receiver is a fundamental property and formidable challenge. In this paper, we investigate anonymous classical message transmission through different quantum networks. Firstly, we establish various quantum network architectures, which can perfectly achieve anonymous communications without authenticated private channels, pre-shared keys or pre-distributed entanglements between any two users, and do not require complex routing through other users. Secondly, we present three practical and feasible quantum anonymous communication protocols for a ring quantum network, a linear quantum network, and a tree or graph mixed quantum network, respectively, which can ensure the information-theoretical security in semi-honest model and resist all side-channel attacks for measurement devices. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments verify the feasibility of our proposed quantum protocols.
This thesis stands at the interface between quantum theory and experiments, focusing on practical protocols that can be implemented using present-day technology. Our goal is to build a general framework for the design and implementation of quantum cryptographic schemes that will improve the safety of future telecommunication networks. In addition, this thesis aims to advance research on quantum physics and computer science, by improving our understanding of entanglement. The correlations of entangled states can not be reproduced by conventional means, allowing to perform tasks (eg teleportation and superdense coding) that are otherwise impossible. It is therefore of major importance to be able to check whether a quantum state is entangled. In this thesis, we show how to efficiently check whether a physical source can create multi-party entangled states and share them with many parties, some of which are dishonest and work with the source. This protocol could prove essential for quantum computation between suspicious parties and could also facilitate the secure delegation of tasks to powerful untrusted quantum servers. Finally, we study the link between game theory and quantum non-locality, in the context of Bayesian games. We examine how the shared entanglement helps players win a game with a higher probability than the conventional resources could achieve.
Graph states are a large class of multipartite entangled quantum states that form the basis of schemes for quantum computation, communication, error correction, metrology, and more. In this work, we consider verification of graph states generated by an untrusted source and shared between a network of possibly dishonest parties. This has implications in certifying the application of graph states for various distributed tasks. We present a protocol which is globally efficient for a large family of useful graph states, including cluster states, GHZ states, cycle graph states, and more. For general graph states, efficiency with respect to the security parameter is maintained, though there is a cost increase with the size of the graph state. The protocols are practical, requiring only multiple copies of the graph state, local measurements, and classical communication.