Quantum anonymous transmissions

  • Authors:
  • Matthias Christandl;Stephanie Wehner

  • Affiliations:
  • Centre for Quantum Computation, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom;Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • ASIACRYPT'05 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security
  • Year:
  • 2005

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We consider the problem of hiding sender and receiver of classical and quantum bits (qubits), even if all physical transmissions can be monitored. We present a quantum protocol for sending and receiving classical bits anonymously, which is completely traceless: it successfully prevents later reconstruction of the sender. We show that this is not possible classically. It appears that entangled quantum states are uniquely suited for traceless anonymous transmissions. We then extend this protocol to send and receive qubits anonymously. In the process we introduce a new primitive called anonymous entanglement, which may be useful in other contexts as well.