Masking of Quantum Information into Restricted Set of states

TL;DR

This paper investigates quantum information masking within restricted state sets using IBM's quantum computer, demonstrating feasible masking through experimental implementation and high-fidelity state tomography.

Contribution

It provides an experimental demonstration of quantum masking for specific states on a real quantum computer, extending theoretical concepts into practical verification.

Findings

Masking of certain quantum states is achievable on IBM quantum hardware.

High-fidelity quantum state tomography confirms successful masking.

Experimental results support the feasibility of quantum masking in practical settings.

Abstract

Masking of data is a method to protect information by shielding it from a third party, however keeping it usable for further usages like application development, building program extensions to name a few. Whereas it is possible for classical information encoded in composite quantum states to be completely masked from reduced sub-systems, it has to be checked if quantum information can also be masked when the future possibilities of a quantum computer are increasing day by day. Newly proposed no-masking theorem [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 230501 (2018)], one of the no-go theorems, demands that except for some restricted sets of non-orthogonal states, it's impossible to mask arbitrary quantum states. Here, we explore the possibility of masking in the IBM quantum experience platform by designing the quantum circuits and running them on the 5-qubit quantum computer. We choose two particular states considering both the orthogonal and non-orthogonal basis states and illustrate their masking through both the theoretical calculation as well as verification in the quantum computer. By quantum state tomography, it is concluded that the experimental results are collected with high fidelity and hence the possibility of masking is realized.