Quantum steganography over noisy channels: Achievability and bounds

Chris Sutherland and Todd A. Brun
Phys. Rev. A 100, 052312 – Published 11 November 2019

Abstract

Characterizing secret communication over noisy quantum channels is an interesting problem from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Suppose Alice and Bob wish to communicate secret information so that an eavesdropper Eve will not suspect any type of encoded communication between the two. Classical or quantum cryptography will not suffice since it is always clear secret communication is taking place. Therefore Alice and Bob must execute what is known as a quantum steganographic protocol. Assuming Eve only has partial knowledge of the channel connecting Alice and Bob, we show that for the bit-flip and depolarizing channels Alice can use Eve's lack of knowledge of the channel parameter to encode quantum information steganographically. We give an explicit encoding procedure and calculate the rate at which Alice and Bob can communicate secretly. We also show that our encoding is optimal for nondegenerate quantum codes. We calculate the rate at which a secret key must be consumed. Finally, we discuss the possibility of steganographic communication over more general quantum channels and conjecture a general formula for the steganographic rate.

  • Figure
  • Received 29 July 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.100.052312

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Quantum Information, Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Chris Sutherland1 and Todd A. Brun1,2

  • 1Department of Physics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0484, USA
  • 2Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-2560, USA

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Issue

Vol. 100, Iss. 5 — November 2019

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