Unclonable Cryptography in Linear Quantum Memory

TL;DR

This paper advances quantum cryptography by reducing the quantum memory needed for unclonable signatures, making quantum cryptographic keys more practical for long-term storage.

Contribution

It introduces novel techniques for proving security of cryptosystems using coset states, significantly decreasing quantum secret key sizes in unclonable cryptography.

Findings

Quantum secret key size is significantly reduced.

Achieved asymptotically optimal key sizes in some cases.

Developed new security proof techniques for coset state-based cryptosystems.

Abstract

Quantum cryptography is a rapidly-developing area which leverages quantum information to accomplish classically-impossible tasks. In many of these protocols, quantum states are used as long-term cryptographic keys. Typically, this is to ensure the keys cannot be copied by an adversary, owing to the quantum no-cloning theorem. Unfortunately, due to quantum state's tendency to decohere, persistent quantum memory will likely be one of the most challenging resources for quantum computers. As such, it will be important to minimize persistent memory in quantum protocols. In this work, we consider the case of one-shot signatures (OSS), and more general quantum signing tokens. These are important unclonable primitives, where quantum signing keys allow for signing a single message but not two. Naturally, these quantum signing keys would require storage in long-term quantum memory. Very recently, the first OSS was constructed in a classical oracle model and also in the standard model, but we observe that the quantum memory required for these protocols is quite large. In this work, we significantly decrease the quantum secret key size, in some cases achieving asymptotically optimal size. To do so, we develop novel techniques for proving the security of cryptosystems using coset states, which are one of the main tools used in unclonable cryptography.