Quantum Secret Sharing of Secure Direct Communication Using One-Time Pad

Instead of sharing some sifted keys, quantum secret sharing of secure direct communication (QSS-SDC) allows a dealer Alice to share her secret message directly with a group of agents, who can then cooperate together to restore her message in a later time. However, we notice that, in order to recover the secret message, most existing QSS-SDC schemes require a quantum memory to store a resulting quantum state. As the technique of quantum memory is still not available today, we present a multiparty QSS-SDC protocol using quantum one time pad, which allows the agents to store their shares with classical binary strings. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses only single photons, which makes it easier to implement with current technology even when the number of the participants becomes large.