A Quantum Copy-Protection Scheme with Authentication

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum copy-protection scheme that uses non-orthogonal quantum states and secret unitary rotations to securely protect classical data, with an authentication method and potential experimental implementation.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum copy-protection method combining non-orthogonal states and secret rotations, along with an authentication protocol and experimental feasibility analysis.

Findings

The scheme effectively prevents classical decryption of quantum-protected data.

Authentication success probabilities are analyzed and optimized.

A feasible experimental setup for the scheme is proposed.

Abstract

We propose a quantum copy-protection system which protects classical information in the form of non-orthogonal quantum states. The decryption of the stored information is not possible in the classical representation and the decryption mechanism of data qubits is realized by secret unitary rotations. We define an authentication method for the proposed copy-protection scheme and analyse the success probabilities of the authentication process. A possible experimental realization of the scheme is also presented.