Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Quantum Steganography using Coherent states in an Optical Channel

Presenting Author: Bruno Avritzer, University of Southern California
Contributing Author(s): Todd Brun

Quantum Steganography is a class of methods for covert quantum communication which take advantage of an information gap between the eavesdropper and the communicating parties to send information secretly. Challenges in this area include finding viable encodings, proving secrecy and optimizing them for the best possible communication rate. In this talk we outline several procedures by which one might communicate covertly by encoding messages in coherent and Fock state mixtures that would appear as a thermal background to eavesdroppers; calculate the efficiency of such procedures in optical systems with and without noise; and describe their potential implementation and effectiveness on actual quantum hardware using homodyne measurement and specific encoding protocols, which we then compare to the theoretical limits.

(Session 5 : Thursday from 4:45 pm - 5:15 pm)