Masking Quantum Information is Impossible

Classical information encoded in composite quantum states can be completely hidden from the reduced subsystems and may be found only in the correlations. Can the same be true for quantum information? If quantum information is hidden from subsystems and spread over quantum correlation, we call it masking of quantum information. We show that while this may still be true for some restricted sets of nonorthogonal quantum states, it is not possible for arbitrary quantum states. This result suggests that quantum qubit commitment—a stronger version of the quantum bit commitment—is not possible in general. Our findings may have potential applications in secret sharing and future quantum communication protocols.