Public-key cryptography based on bounded quantum reference frames

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum-public-key cryptographic protocol based on bounded quantum reference frames, demonstrating its security and reusability for authentication purposes.

Contribution

It presents the first quantum-public-key cryptographic protocol using bounded quantum reference frames and proves its security and reusability.

Findings

Protocol is secure under honest-verifier assumption

Protocol is reusable for quantum-public-key authentication

Framework extends cryptographic applications of quantum reference frames

Abstract

We demonstrate that the framework of bounded quantum reference frames has application to building quantum-public-key cryptographic protocols and proving their security. Thus, the framework we introduce can be seen as a public-key analogue of the framework of Bartlett et al. (Phys. Rev. A 70, 032307), where a private shared reference frame is shown to have cryptographic application. The protocol we present in this paper is an identification scheme, which, like a digital signature scheme, is a type of authentication scheme. We prove that our protocol is both reusable and secure under the honest-verifier assumption. Thus, we also demonstrate that secure reusable quantum-public-key authentication is possible to some extent.