Utilizing a Fully Optical and Reconfigurable PUF as a Quantum Authentication Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel fully optical, reconfigurable physically unclonable function (PUF) based on Mach-Zehnder interferometers, for secure authentication of physical objects and quantum/information messages.

Contribution

It presents a new reconfigurable optical PUF design that can authenticate both physical items and transmitted information, including quantum messages.

Findings

Demonstrates a reconfigurable optical PUF architecture.

Shows potential for secure quantum and classical message authentication.

Proposes a scalable, hardware-based authentication method.

Abstract

In this work the novel usage of a physically unclonable function composed of a network of Mach-Zehnder interferometers for authentication tasks is described. The physically unclonable function hardware is completely reconfigurable, allowing for a large number of seemingly independent devices to be utilized, thus imitating a large array of single-response physically unclonable functions. It is proposed that any reconfigurable array of Mach-Zehnder interferometers can be used as an authentication mechanism, not only for physical objects, but for information transmitted both classically and quantumly. The proposed use-case for a fully-optical physically unclonable function, designed with reconfigurable hardware, is to authenticate messages between a trusted and possibly untrusted party; verifying that the messages received are generated by the holder of the authentic device.