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arXiv:quant-ph/0108026

Quantum coin flipping with arbitrary small bias is impossible

Tokunaga, Yuki

Published Aug 6, 2001• 1 citation
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Abstract

Lo and Chau showed that an ideal quantum coin flipping protocol is impossible. The proof was simply derived from the impossibility proof of quantum bit commitment. However, the proof still leaves the possibility of a quantum coin flipping protocol with arbitrary small bias. In this paper, we show that a quantum coin flipping protocol with arbitrary small bias is impossible and show the lower bound of the bias of quantum coin flipping protocol.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0108026

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Lo and Chau showed that an ideal quantum coin flipping protocol is impossible. The proof was simply derived from the impossibility proof of quantum bit commitment. However, the proof still leaves the possibility of a quantum coin flipping protocol with arbitrary small bias. In this paper, we show that a quantum coin flipping protocol with arbitrary small bias is impossible and show the lower bound of the bias of quantum coin flipping protocol.
In this paper, we focus on a special framework for quantum coin flipping protocols,_bit-commitment based protocols_, within which almost all known protocols fit. We show a lower bound of 1/16 for the bias in any such protocol. We also analyse a sequence of multi-round protocol that tries to overcome the drawbacks of the previously proposed protocols, in order to lower the bias. We show an intricate cheating strategy for this sequence, which leads to a bias of 1/4. This indicates that a bias of 1/4 might be optimal in such protocols, and also demonstrates that a cleverer proof technique may be required to show this optimality.
In this paper we focus on a special framework for quantum coin-flipping protocols, bit-commitment-based protocols, within which almost all known protocols fit. We show a lower bound of 1/16 for the bias in any such protocol. We also analyze a sequence of multiround protocols that tries to overcome the drawbacks of the previously proposed protocols in order to lower the bias. We show an intricate cheating strategy for this sequence, which leads to a bias of 1/4. This indicates that a bias of 1/4 might be optimal in such protocols, and also demonstrates that a more clever proof technique may be required to show this optimality.
How can two parties with competing interests carry out a fair coin flip across a quantum communication channel? This problem (quantum weak coin-flipping) was formalized more than 15 years ago, and, despite some phenomenal theoretical progress, practical quantum coin-flipping protocols with vanishing bias have proved hard to find. In the current work we show that there is a reason that practical weak quantum coin-flipping is difficult: any quantum weak coin-flipping protocol with bias є must use at least exp( Ω (1/√є )) rounds of communication. This is a large improvement over the previous best known lower bound of Ω ( log log(1/є )) due to Ambainis from 2004. Our proof is based on a theoretical construction (the two-variable profile function) which may find further applications.
We present a new protocol and two lower bounds for quantum coin flipping. In our protocol, no dishonest party can achieve one outcome with probability more than 0.75. Then, we show that our protocol is optimal for a certain type of quantum protocols. For arbitrary quantum protocols, we show that if a protocol achieves a bias of at most εεε, it must use at least Ω(log⁡log⁡1ε)Ω(\log \log \frac{1}ε)Ω(loglogε1​) rounds of communication. This implies that the parallel repetition fails for quantum coin flipping. (The bias of a protocol cannot be arbitrarily decreased by running several copies of it in parallel.)
This note presents a quantum protocol that demonstrates that_weak_ coin flipping with bias approximately 0.239, less than 1/4, is possible. A bias of 1/4 was the smallest known, and followed from the strong coin flipping protocol of [Ambainis 2001]. Protocols with yet smaller bias, approximately 0.207, have independently been discovered [Ambainis 2001, Spekkens and Rudolph 2002]. We also present an alternative strong coin flipping protocol with bias 1/4 with analysis simpler than that of [Ambainis 2001].