Secret Sharing with a Single d-level Quantum System

Abstract

We give an example of a wide class of problems for which quantum information protocols based on multi-system entanglement can be mapped into much simpler ones involving one system. Secret sharing is a cryptographic primitive which plays a central role in various secure multiparty computation tasks and management of keys in cryptography. In secret sharing protocols, a classical message is divided into shares given to recipient parties in such a way that some number of parties need to collaborate in order to reconstruct the message. Quantum protocols for the task commonly rely on multi-partite GHZ entanglement. We present a multiparty secret sharing protocol which requires only sequential communication of a single quantum d-level system (for any prime d). It has huge advantages in scalabilility and can be realized with the state of the art technology. n be realized with the state of the art technology.