Tal Mor

Tal Mor, Roman Shapira, Guy Shemesh

Quantum candies (qandies) is a pedagogical simple model which describes many concepts from quantum information processing (QIP) intuitively, without the need to understand or make use of superpositions, and without the need of using complex algebra. One of the topics in quantum cryptography which gains research attention in recent years is quantum digital signatures (QDS), involving protocols to securely sign classical bits using quantum methods. In this paper we show how the "qandy model" can be used to describe three QDS protocols, in order to provide an important and potentially practical example of the power of "superpositionless" quantum information processing, for individuals without background knowledge in the field.

Junan Lin, Tal Mor, Roman Shapira

The field of quantum information is becoming more known to the general public. However, effectively demonstrating the concepts underneath quantum science and technology to the general public can be a challenging job. We investigate, extend, and greatly expand here "quantum candies" (invented by Jacobs), a pedagogical model for intuitively describing some basic concepts in quantum information, including quantum bits, complementarity, the no-cloning principle, and entanglement. Following Jacob's quantum candies description of the well-known quantum key distribution protocol BB84, we explicitly demonstrate additional quantum cryptography protocols and quantum communication protocols, using generalized quantum candies (including correlated pairs of qandies). These demonstrations are done in an approachable manner, that can be explained to high-school students, without using the hard-to-grasp concept of superpositions and its mathematics. The intuitive model we investigate has a fascinating overlap with some of the most basic features of quantum theory. Hence, it can be a valuable tool for science and engineering educators who would like to help the general public to gain more insights into quantum science and technology. For the experts, the model we present, due to not employing quantum superpositions, enables - in some sense - extending far beyond quantum theory. Most remarkably, "quantum" candies of some unique type can be defined, such that non-local boxes (of the Popescu-Rohrlich type) as well as regular (correlated) quantum candies can be generated by a single `"quantum" candies machine.

Walter O. Krawec, Rotem Liss, Tal Mor

Semiquantum key distribution (SQKD) allows two parties (Alice and Bob) to create a shared secret key, even if one of these parties (say, Alice) is classical. However, most SQKD protocols suffer from severe practical security problems when implemented using photons. The recently developed "Mirror protocol" [Boyer, Katz, Liss, and Mor, Phys. Rev. A 96, 062335 (2017)] is an experimentally feasible SQKD protocol overcoming those drawbacks. The Mirror protocol was proven robust (namely, it was proven secure against a limited class of attacks including all noiseless attacks), but its security in case some noise is allowed (natural or due to eavesdropping) has not been proved yet. Here we prove security of the Mirror protocol against a wide class of quantum attacks (the "collective attacks"), and we evaluate the allowed noise threshold and the resulting key rate.

Junan Lin, Tal Mor

The field of quantum information is becoming more known to the general public. However, effectively demonstrating the concepts underneath quantum science and technology to the general public can be a challenging job. We investigate, extend, and much expand here "quantum candies" (invented by Jacobs), a pedagogical model for intuitively describing some basic concepts in quantum information, including quantum bits, complementarity, the no-cloning principle, and entanglement. Following Jacob's quantum candies description of the well known quantum key distribution protocol BB84, we explicitly demonstrate various additional quantum cryptography protocols using quantum candies in an approachable manner. The model we investigate can be a valuable tool for science and engineering educators who would like to help the general public to gain more insights about quantum science and technology: most parts of this paper, including many protocols for quantum cryptography, are expected to be easily understandable by a layperson without any previous knowledge of mathematics, physics, or cryptography.

Michel Boyer, Rotem Liss, Tal Mor

Quantum Cryptography uses the counter-intuitive properties of Quantum Mechanics for performing cryptographic tasks in a secure and reliable way. The Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol BB84 has been proven secure against several important types of attacks: collective attacks and joint attacks. Here we analyze the security of a modified BB84 protocol, for which information is sent only in the z basis while testing is done in both the z and the x bases, against collective attacks. The proof follows the framework of a previous paper (Boyer, Gelles, and Mor, 2009), but it avoids a classical information-theoretical analysis and proves a fully composable security. We show that this modified BB84 protocol is as secure against collective attacks as the original BB84 protocol, and that it requires more bits for testing.

Michel Boyer, Rotem Liss, Tal Mor

The Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol BB84 has been proven secure against several important types of attacks: the collective attacks and the joint attacks. Here we analyze the security of a modified BB84 protocol, for which information is sent only in the z basis while testing is done in both the z and the x bases, against collective attacks. The proof follows the framework of a previous paper (Boyer, Gelles, and Mor, 2009), but it avoids the classical information-theoretical analysis that caused problems with composability. We show that this modified BB84 protocol is as secure against collective attacks as the original BB84 protocol, and that it requires more bits for testing.

Michel Boyer, Matty Katz, Rotem Liss et al.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols make it possible for two quantum parties to generate a secret shared key. Semiquantum key distribution (SQKD) protocols, such as "QKD with classical Bob" and "QKD with classical Alice" (that have both been proven robust), achieve this goal even if one of the parties is classical. However, existing SQKD protocols are not experimentally feasible with current technology. Here we suggest a new protocol, "Classical Alice with a controllable mirror", that can be experimentally implemented with current technology (using 4-level systems instead of qubits), and we prove it to be robust.

Michel Boyer, Ran Gelles, Tal Mor

We consider quantum key distribution implementations in which the receiver's apparatus is fixed and does not depend on his choice of basis at each qubit transmission. We show that, although theoretical quantum key distribution is proven secure, such implementations are totally insecure against a strong eavesdropper that has one-time (single) access to the receiver's equipment. The attack we present here, the "fixed-apparatus attack" causes a potential risk to the usefulness of several recent implementations.