Forcible-Measurement Attack on Quantum Secure Direct Communication Protocol with Cluster State

The security of the quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol with cluster state is analysed. It is shown that the secret would be partially leaked out when an eavesdropper performs forcible measurements on the transmitted particles. With the help of the result in minimum error discrimination, an upper bound （i.e. 40%） of this leakage is obtained. Moreover, the particular measurements which makes the leakage reach this bound are given.     

Threshold Quantum Secret Sharing of Secure Direct Communication

We propose a （L, n）-threshold quantum secret sharing protocol of secure direct communication following some ideas of Zhang＇s protocol [Phys. Lett. A 342 （2005） 60] and Tokunaga et al.＇s protocol [Phys. Rev. A 71 （2005） 012314]. The sender distributes the classical secret shares to his or her n agents and each agent owns a secret share in advance. The sender＇s secure direct communication message can be extracted by an agent subset by collaboration in such a way that at least t or more agents can obtain the secret message with the mutual assistances but any t - 1 or fewer agents cannot. In contrast to the previous multiparty quantum secret sharing protocols in which the sender＇s secret message can be recovered only if all the agents collaborate, our protocol is more practical and more flexible.     

Quantum Bidirectional Secure Direct Communication via Entanglement Swapping

In light of a quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） scheme using entanglement swapping [Chin. Phys. Lett. 22 （2005）18], by introducing additional local operations for encoding, we propose a bidirectional QSDC （BQSDC） protocol, in which two legitimate users can simultaneously exchange their respective messages. The rule for the users to retrieve his/her partner＇s messages is derived explicitly in the most general case. Eve＇s commonly used attack method has been discussed and can be detected with the security checking process.     

Efficient Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Authentication

Two protocols of quantum direct communication with authentication [Phys. Rev. A 73 （2006） 042305] were recently indicated to be insecure against the authenticator Trent attacks [Phys. Rev. A 75 （2007） 026301]. We present two efficient protocols by using four Panli operations, which are secure against inner Trent attacks as well as outer Eve attacks. Finally, we generalize them to multiparty quantum direction communication.     

Improvement of Security of Three-Party Quantum Secure Direct Communication Based on GHZ States

A protocol for three-party quantum secure direct communication based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger （GHZ） states was recently proposed by 3in et al. [Phys. Lett. A 354 （2006） 67] By analysing the protocol we find some security loopholes, e.g. one bit of secret messages of a party （Alice in the original paper） can always be leaked straight to the public without any eavesdropping. These problems suggested previously are discussed and possible solutions are presented to improve the security of the original protocol.     

Efficient One-Sender Versus N-Receiver Quantum Secure Direct Communication

An efficient quantum secure direct communication protocol with one-sender versus N-receiver is proposed. The secret bits can be encoded in the N ＋ 1-particle GHZ states and can be decoded by the N receivers with a classical information of the sender plus their own measurement outcomes. Any attacks can be detected by comparing measurement results on the detecting states.     

Secure Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Reusable GHZ States as Secure Carriers

We show that a potential eavesdropper can eavesdrop whole secret information when the legitimate users use secure carrier to encode and decode classical information repeatedly in the protocol proposed by Bagherinezhad S and Karimipour V [Phys. Rev. A 67（2003）044302]. Then we present a revised quantum secret sharing protocol by using the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state as secure carrier. Our protocol can resist Eve＇s attack.     

A Modified Protocol of Quantum Key Distribution Based on Entanglement Swapping

By comparing Cabello＇s addendum to his quantum key distribution protocol [Phys. Rev. A 64 （2001） 024301], we propose a more convenient modified protocol based on the entanglement swapping which is secure against the eavesdropping strategy addressed by Zhang et al. [Phys. Rev. A 63 （2001）036301] and other existing types of attack.     

Cryptanalysis of Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing of Quantum State Using Entangled States

Security of a quantum secret sharing of quantum state protocol proposed by Guo et al. [Chin. Phys. Lett. 25 （2008） 16] is reexamined. It is shown that an eavesdropper can obtain some of the transmitted secret information by monitoring the classical channel or the entire secret by intercepting the quantum states, and moreover, the eavesdropper can even maliciously replace the secret message with an arbitrary message without being detected. Finally, the deep reasons why an eavesdropper can attack this protocol are discussed and the modified protocol is presented to amend the security loopholes.     

Quantum Secure Direct Communication Based on Authentication

We propose two schemes of quantum secure direct communication （QADC） combined ideas of user authentication [Phys. Rev. A 73 （2006） 042305] and direct communication with dense coding [Phys. Rev. A. 68 （2003） 042317]. In these protocols, the privacy of authentication keys and the properties of the EPR pairs not only ensure the realization of identity authentication but also further improve the security of communication, and no secret messages are leaked even if the messages were broken.     

Secure quantum sealed-bid auction

A new experimentally feasible and secure quantum sealed-bid auction protocol using quantum secure direct communication based on GHZ states is proposed. In this scheme all bidders Bob, Charlie, … , and Zach use M groups n-particle GHZ states to represent their bids. Here, an auctioneer gives the auction outcome by performing a sequence of n-particle GHZ-basis measurements on the final quantum states. It has been shown that using this method guarantees the honesty of the protocol, and malicious bidders can not collude with the auctioneers.     

A Special Eavesdropping on One-Sender Versus N-Receiver QSDC Protocol

We analyse the security of a quantum secure direct communication （QSDC） protocol and find that an eavesdropper can utilize a special property of GHZ states to elicit all or part of the transmitted secrets without being detected. The particular attack strategy is presented in detail. We give an improved version of this protocol so that it can resist this attack.     

Secure quantum telephone

A quantum telephone protocol including the dialing process and the talking one is proposed. In the dialing process, with their respective secret keys, the legitimate communicators Alice and Bob can pass the authentication by Charlie acting as a telephone company. In the talking process, Charlie provides the authenticated Alice and Bob with a quantum channel sequence, on which Alice and Bob can communicate with each other directly and privately by virtue of some encoding operations. Different from the insecure classical telephone having been used in our lives, the proposed quantum telephone protocol has asymptotically security and the communicators cannot disavow having used the quantum channels.     

Multiparty Quantum Remote Secret Conference

We present two schemes for multiparty quantum remote secret conference in which each legitimate conferee can read out securely the secret message announced by another, but a vicious eavesdropper can get nothing about it. The first one is based on the same key shared efficiently and securely by all the parties with Greenberger-Horne- Zeilinger （GHZ） states, and each conferee sends his secret message to the others with one-time pad crypto-system. The other one is based on quantum encryption with a quantum key~ a sequence of GHZ states shared among all the conferees and used repeatedly after confirming their security. Both these schemes are optimal as their intrinsic efficiency for qubits approaches the maximal value.     

Three-Party Simultaneous Quantum Secure Direct Communication Scheme with EPR Pairs

We present a scheme for three-party simultaneous quantum secure direct communication by using EPR pairs. In the scheme, three legitimate parties can simultaneously exchange their secret messages. The scheme is also proven to be secure against the intercept-and-resend attack, the disturbance attack and the entangled-and- measure attack.     

Quantum state transfer via a two-qubit Heisenberg XXZ spin model

Transfer of quantum states through a two-qubit Heisenberg XXZ spin model with a nonuniform magnetic field b is investigated by means of quantum theory. The influences of b, the spin exchange coupling J and the effective transfer time T=Jt on the fidelity have been studied for some different initial states. Results show that fidelity of the transferred state is determined not only by J, T and b but also by the initial state of this quantum system. Ideal information transfer can be realized for some kinds of initial states. We also found that the interactions of the z-component Jz and uniform magnetic field B do not have any contribution to the fidelity. These results may be useful for quantum information processing.     

Multiparty Quantum Chatting Scheme

We propose a new multiparty simultaneous quantum direct communication scheme based on Creen-Horne- Zeilinger （CHZ） states and dense coding. For achieving high efficiency without leaking any information, four encoding schemes are prepared in advance. The present scheme has the capacity of transmitting （M ＋ 1）M classical bits per group of M-particle CHZ states when there exist M parties. The technique of rearranging particles makes the legal users coequally exchange their messages in the same length. Both high efficiency and excellent security against the common attacks are virtues of this new scheme.     

One-Step Implementation of Mulitqubit Quantum Phase Gate in a Cavity QED System

An alternative protocol is proposed to implement three-qubit phase gate between photon and atoms in a high-Q bimodel optical cavity. The idea can be extended to directly implement N-qubit phase gate, and the gating time that is required to implement the protocol does not rise with increasing number of qubits. The influence of cavity decay and atomic spontaneous emission on the gate fidelity is also discussed.     

Quantum state sharing of an arbitrary m-qudit state with two-qudit entanglements and generalized Bell-state measurements

A scheme for quantum state sharing of an arbitrary m-qudit state is proposed with two-qudit entanglements and generalized Bell-state (GBS) measurements. In this scheme, the sender Alice should perform m two-particle GBS measurements on her 2m qudits, and the controllers also take GBS measurements on their qudits and transfer their quantum information to the receiver with entanglement swapping if the agents cooperate. We discuss two topological structures for this quantum state sharing scheme, a dispersive one and a circular one. The former is better at the aspect of security than the latter as it requires the number of the agents who should cooperate for recovering the quantum secret larger than the other one.     

Partial Hermitian Conjugate Separability Criteria for Pure Quantum States

We propose a criterion for the separability of quantum pure states using the concept of a partial Hermitian conjugate. It is equivalent to the usual positive partial transposition criteria, with a simple physical interpretation.