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Anonymous quantum conference key agreement (AQCKA) allows a group of users within a network to establish a shared cryptographic key without revealing their participation. Although this can be achieved using bi-partite primitives alone, it is costly in the number of network rounds required. By allowing the use of multi-partite entanglement, there is a substantial efficiency improvement. We experimentally implement the AQCKA task in a six-user quantum network using Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)-state entanglement and obtain a significant resource cost reduction in line with theory when compared to a bi-partite-only approach. We also demonstrate that the protocol retains an advantage in a four-user scenario with finite key effects taken into account.

Here we consider the task of device-independent certification of the quantum state distributed in a network when some of the nodes in this network may collude and act dishonestly. We introduce the paradigm of self-testing with dishonest parties and present a protocol to self-test the GHZ state in this framework. We apply this result for state certification in a network with dishonest parties and also provide robust statements about the fidelity of the shared state. Finally, we extend our results to the cluster scenario, where several subgroups of parties may collude during the state certification. Our findings provide a new operational motivation for the strong definition of genuine multipartite nonlocality as originally introduced by Svetlichny in [PRD 35, 3066 (1987)]., Comment: 6+8 pages, 3 figures

Robustness measures are increasingly prominent resource quantifiers that have been introduced for quantum resource theories such as entanglement and coherence. Despite the generality of these measures, their usefulness is hindered by the fact that some of their mathematical properties remain unclear, especially when the set of resource-free states is non-convex. In this paper, we investigate continuity properties of different robustness functions. We show that their continuity depends on the shape of the set of free states. In particular, we demonstrate that in many cases, star-convexity is sufficient for Lipschitz-continuity of the robustness, and we provide specific examples of sets leading to non-continuous measures. Finally, we illustrate the applicability of our results by defining a robustness of teleportability and of quantum discord., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures

Twin-Field Quantum Key Distribution (TF-QKD) enables two distant parties to establish a shared secret key, by interfering weak coherent pulses (WCPs) in an intermediate measuring station. This allows TF-QKD to reach greater distances than traditional QKD schemes and makes it the only scheme capable of beating the repeaterless bound on the bipartite private capacity. Here, we generalize TF-QKD to the multipartite scenario. Specifically, we propose a practical conference key agreement (CKA) protocol that only uses WCPs and linear optics and prove its security with a multiparty decoy-state method. Our protocol allows an arbitrary number of parties to establish a secret conference key by single-photon interference, enabling it to overcome recent bounds on the rate at which conference keys can be established in quantum networks without a repeater., Comment: 10 + 26 pages, 5 figures

Device-independent (DI) protocols, such as DI conference key agreement (DICKA) and DI randomness expansion (DIRE), certify private randomness by observing nonlocal correlations when two or more parties test a Bell inequality. While most DI protocols are restricted to bipartite Bell tests, harnessing multipartite nonlocal correlations may lead to better performance. Here, we consider tripartite DICKA and DIRE protocols based on testing multipartite Bell inequalities, specifically: the Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko (MABK) inequality, and the Holz and the Parity-CHSH inequalities introduced in the context of DICKA protocols. We evaluate the asymptotic performance of the DICKA (DIRE) protocols in terms of their conference key rate (net randomness generation rate), by deriving lower bounds on the conditional von Neumann entropy of one party's outcome and two parties' outcomes. For the Holz inequality, we prove a tight analytical lower bound on the one-outcome entropy and conjecture a tight lower bound on the two-outcome entropy. We additionally re-derive the analytical one-outcome entropy bound for the MABK inequality with a much simpler method and obtain a numerical lower bound on the two-outcome entropy for the Parity-CHSH inequality. Our simulations show that DICKA and DIRE protocols employing tripartite Bell inequalities can significantly outperform their bipartite counterparts. Moreover, we establish that genuine multipartite entanglement is not a precondition for multipartite DIRE while its necessity for DICKA remains an open question., Comment: 12 pages main text, 36 pages in total. 5 figures, 3 tables

Users of quantum networks can securely communicate via so-called (quantum) conference key agreement --making their identities publicly known. In certain circumstances, however, communicating users demand anonymity. Here, we introduce a security framework for anonymous conference key agreement with different levels of anonymity, which is inspired by the epsilon-security of quantum key distribution. We present efficient and noise-tolerant protocols exploiting multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and prove their security in the finite-key regime. We analyze the performance of our protocols in noisy and lossy quantum networks and compare with protocols that only use bipartite entanglement to achieve the same functionalities. Our simulations show that GHZ-based protocols can outperform protocols based on bipartite entanglement and that the advantage increases for protocols with stronger anonymity requirements. Our results strongly advocate the use of multipartite entanglement for cryptographic tasks involving several users., Comment: 23 pages and 3 figures. The Supplemental Material is placed at the end of the manuscript. Main changes with respect to previous version: new title, Introduction section reworked, references added, section 10 added in the Supplemental Material

Entanglement plays a crucial role in the security of quantum key distribution. A secret key can only be obtained by two parties if there exists a corresponding entanglement-based description of the protocol in which entanglement is witnessed, as shown by Curty et al (2004). Here we investigate the role of entanglement for the generalization of quantum key distribution to the multipartite scenario, namely conference key agreement. In particular, we ask whether the strongest form of multipartite entanglement, namely genuine multipartite entanglement, is necessary to establish a conference key. We show that, surprisingly, a non-zero conference key can be obtained even if the parties share biseparable states in each round of the protocol. Moreover we relate conference key agreement with entanglement witnesses and show that a non-zero conference key can be interpreted as a non-linear entanglement witness that detects a class of states which cannot be detected by usual linear entanglement witnesses., Comment: 5 + 5 pages, 4 figures. v02: Strengthened results, including performance of the family of biseparable states under consideration for the N-BB84 protocol. Section III of supplemental material of v01 removed, as it contained an example state mistakenly claimed to be biseparable

Multiparty quantum cryptography based on distributed entanglement will find its natural application in the upcoming quantum networks. The security of many multipartite device-independent (DI) protocols, such as DI conference key agreement, relies on bounding the von Neumann entropy of the parties' outcomes conditioned on the eavesdropper's information, given the violation of a multipartite Bell inequality. We consider three parties testing the Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko (MABK) inequality and certify the privacy of their outcomes by bounding the conditional entropy of a single party's outcome and the joint conditional entropy of two parties' outcomes. From the former bound, we show that genuine multipartite entanglement is necessary to certify the privacy of a party's outcome, while the latter significantly improve previous results. We obtain the entropy bounds thanks to two general results of independent interest. The first one drastically simplifies the quantum setup of an $N$-partite Bell scenario. The second one provides an upper bound on the violation of the MABK inequality by an arbitrary $N$-qubit state, as a function of the state's parameters., Comment: Added discussion on the tightness of the entropy bounds, with comparison between analytical bounds and numerical estimations. Added explicit proof of the necessity of genuine multipartite entanglement for the secrecy of a party's outcome

High-dimensional entanglement promises to increase the information capacity of photons and is now routinely generated exploiting spatio-temporal degrees of freedom of single photons. A curious feature of these systems is the possibility to certify entanglement despite strong noise in the data. We show that it is also possible to exploit this noisy high-dimensional entanglement for quantum key distribution by introducing a protocol that uses mutliple subspaces of the high-dimensional system simultaneously. Our protocol can be used to establish a secret key even in extremely noisy experimental conditions, where qubit protocols fail. To show that, we analyze the performance of our protocol for noise models that apply to the two most commonly used sources of high-dimensional entanglement: time bins and spatial modes.

Conference key agreement (CKA), or multipartite key distribution, is a cryptographic task where more than two parties wish to establish a common secret key. A composition of bipartite quantum key distribution protocols can accomplish this task. However, the existence of multipartite quantum correlations allows for new and potentially more efficient protocols, to be applied in future quantum networks. Here, we review the existing quantum CKA protocols based on multipartite entanglement, both in the device-dependent and the device-independent scenario., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Contribution to special issue "Advancing quantum technologies - chances and challenges" of Advanced Quantum Technologies. v2: small changes, new citations included, close to the published version

We consider the asymptotic key rates achieved in the simplest quantum key distribution protocols, namely the BB84 and the six-state protocols, when non-uniform noise is present in the system. We first observe that higher qubit error rates do not necessarily imply lower key rates. Secondly, we consider protocols with advantage distillation and show that it can be advantageous to use the basis with higher quantum bit error rate for the key generation. We then discuss the relation between advantage distillation and entanglement distillation protocols. We show that applying advantage distillation to a string of bits formed by the outcomes of measurements in the basis with higher quantum bit error rate is closely connected to the two-to-one entanglement distillation protocol DEJMPS. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for implementations of quantum key distribution., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Typos corrected and references added. Close to the published version

We consider the task of sharing a secret quantum state in a quantum network in a verifiable way. We propose a protocol that achieves this task, while reducing the number of required qubits, as compared to the existing protocols. To achieve this, we combine classical encryption of the quantum secret with an existing verifiable quantum secret sharing scheme based on Calderbank-Shor-Steane quantum error correcting codes. In this way we obtain a verifiable hybrid secret sharing scheme for sharing qubits, which combines the benefits of quantum and classical schemes. Our scheme does not reveal any information to any group of less than half of the $n$ nodes participating in the protocol. Moreover, for sharing a one-qubit state each node needs a quantum memory to store $n$ single-qubit shares, and requires a workspace of at most $3n$ qubits in total to verify the quantum secret. Importantly, in our scheme an individual share is encoded in a single qubit, as opposed to previous schemes requiring $\Omega(\log n)$ qubits per share. Furthermore, we define a ramp verifiable hybrid scheme. We give explicit examples of various verifiable hybrid schemes based on existing quantum error correcting codes., Comment: 12 + 5 pages, 3 figures

In the implementation of device-independent quantum key distribution we are interested in maximizing the key rate, i.e. the number of key bits that can be obtained per signal, for a fixed security parameter. In the finite size regime, we furthermore also care about the minimum number of signals required before key can be obtained at all. Here, we perform a fully finite size analysis of device independent protocols using the CHSH inequality both for collective and coherent attacks. For coherent attacks, we sharpen the results recently derived in Arnon-Friedman et al., Nat. Commun. 9, 459 (2018), to reduce the minimum number of signals before key can be obtained. In the regime of collective attacks, where the devices are restricted to have no memory, we employ two different techniques that exploit this restriction to further reduce the number of signals. We then discuss experimental platforms in which DIQKD may be implemented. We analyse Bell violations and expected QBER achieved in previous Bell tests with distant setups and situate these parameters in the security analysis. Moreover, focusing on one of the experimental platforms, namely nitrogen-vacancy based systems, we describe experimental improvements that can lead to a device-independent quantum key distribution implementation in the near future., Comment: 39+15 pages, 7 figures. Minor improvements in the main text; references added. Revised proofs of Theorems 2 and 3, correcting dependence on the conditioned state. Close to the published version

We consider the task of anonymously transmitting a quantum message in a network. We present a protocol that accomplishes this task using the W state and we analyze its performance in a quantum network where some form of noise is present. We then compare the performance of our protocol with some of the existing protocols developed for the task of anonymous transmission. We show that, in many regimes, our protocol tolerates more noise and achieves higher fidelities of the transmitted quantum message than the other ones. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our protocol tolerates one non-responsive node. We prove the security of our protocol in a semi-active adversary scenario, meaning that we consider an active adversary and a trusted source., Comment: 9 + 12 pages, 9 figures

We present the first security analysis of conference key agreement (CKA) in the most adversarial model of device independence (DI). Our protocol can be implemented {by any experimental setup} that is capable of performing Bell tests (specifically, we introduce the "Parity-CHSH" inequality), and security can in principle be obtained for any violation of the Parity-CHSH inequality. We use a direct connection between the $N$-partite Parity-CHSH inequality and the CHSH inequality. Namely, the Parity-CHSH inequality can be considered as a CHSH inequality or another CHSH inequality (equivalent up to relabelling) depending on the parity of the output of $N-2$ of the parties. We compare the asymptotic key rate for DICKA to the case where the parties use $N-1$ DIQKD protocols in order to generate a common key. We show that for some regime of noise the DICKA protocol leads to better rates., Comment: 6+17 pages, 1 figure. v2: This update addresses the comment made in [arXiv:1906.01710]. v3: corrected typo in equations (A.65) and (11)

One of the main goals in the study of quantum nonlocality is to determine the maximum violation achieved by quantum correlations in a Bell scenario. However, given a Bell inequality, there is no general algorithm to perform this task. As an intermediate step, the development of efficiently computable bounds has played an important role for the advance of the field. In this thesis we phrase the problem of determining the quantum value of a Bell expression in the framework of computational complexity. Then we present our contributions exploring efficiently computable bounds (based on the spectral norm of some matrices) to the quantum value of a particular class of Bell inequalities: the linear games. We derive several results for the bipartite and the multipartite scenarios., Comment: PhD Thesis, Departamento de F\'isica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, February 2016. (This Thesis was revised in March/2017 and Journal references were updated.)

Device-independent quantum cryptography allows security even if the devices used to execute the protocol are untrusted - whether this is due to unknown imperfections in the implementation, or because the adversary himself constructed them to subvert the security of the protocol. While device-independence has seen much attention in the domain of quantum key distribution, relatively little is known for general protocols. Here we introduce a new model for device-independence for two-party protocols and position verification in the noisy-storage model. For the first time, we show that such protocols are secure in the most general device-independent model in which the devices may have arbitrary memory, states and measurements. In our analysis, we make use of a slight modification of a beautiful new tool developed in [arXiv:1607.01796] called "Entropy Accumulation Theorem". What's more, the protocols we analyze use only simple preparations and measurements, and can be realized using any experimental setup able to perform a CHSH Bell test. Specifically, security can be attained for any violation of the CHSH inequality, where a higher violation merely leads to a reduction in the amount of rounds required to execute the protocol., Comment: There is an unresolved problem with an important step of the security proofs of the protocols in Lemma 25 of appendix A. 20+6 pages, 6 figures

Positive maps applied to a subsystem of a bipartite quantum state constitute a central tool in characterising entanglement. In the multipartite case, however, the direct application of a positive but not completely positive map cannot distinguish if a state is genuinely multipartite entangled or just entangled across some bipartition. We thus generalise this bipartite concept to the multipartite setting by introducing non-positive maps that are positive on the subset of bi-separable states, but can map to a non-positive element if applied to a genuine multipartite entangled state. We explicitly construct examples of multipartite non-positive maps, obtained from positive maps via a lifting procedure, that in this fashion can reveal genuine multipartite entanglement in a robust way., Comment: 16+15 pages, 1 figure

We study the faces of the set of quantum correlations, i.e., the Bell and noncontextuality inequalities without any quantum violation. First, we investigate the question whether every proper (tight) Bell inequality for two parties, other than the trivial ones from positivity, normalization and no-signaling can be violated by quantum correlations, i.e., whether the classical Bell polytope or the smaller correlation polytope share any facets with their respective quantum sets. To do this, we develop a recently derived bound on the quantum value of linear games based on the norms of game matrices to give a simple sufficient condition to identify linear games with no quantum advantage. Additionally we show how this bound can be extended to the general class of unique games, illustrating it for the case of three outcomes. We then show as a main result that the paradigmatic examples of correlation Bell inequalities with no quantum violation, namely the non-local computation games do not constitute tight Bell inequalities, not even for the correlation polytope. We also extend this to an arbitrary prime number of outcomes for a specific class of these games. We then study the faces in the simplest CHSH Bell scenario of binary dichotomic measurements, and identify edges in the set of quantum correlations in this scenario. Finally, we relate the non-contextual polytope of single-party correlation inequalities with the cut polytope $CUT(\nabla G)$, where $G$ denotes the compatibility graph of observables in the contextuality scenario and $\nabla G$ denotes the suspension graph of $G$. We observe that there exist tight non-contextuality inequalities with no quantum violation, and furthermore that this set of inequalities is beyond those implied by the Consistent Exclusivity principle., Comment: 16 pages

Here we study multiplayer linear games, a natural generalization of XOR games to multiple outcomes. We generalize a recently proposed efficiently computable bound, in terms of the norm of a game matrix, on the quantum value of 2-player games to linear games with $n$ players. As an example, we bound the quantum value of a generalization of the well-known CHSH game to $n$ players and $d$ outcomes. We also apply the bound to show in a simple manner that any nontrivial functional box, that could lead to trivialization of communication complexity in a multiparty scenario, cannot be realized in quantum mechanics. We then present a systematic method to derive device-independent witnesses of genuine tripartite entanglement., Comment: 7+8 pages

A natural generalization of the binary XOR games to the class of XOR-d games with $d > 2$ outcomes is studied. We propose an algebraic bound to the quantum value of these games and use it to derive several interesting properties of these games. As an example, we re-derive in a simple manner a recently discovered bound on the quantum value of the CHSH-d game for prime $d$. It is shown that no total function XOR-d game with uniform inputs can be a pseudo-telepathy game, there exists a quantum strategy to win the game only when there is a classical strategy also. We then study the principle of lack of quantum advantage in the distributed non-local computation of binary functions which is a well-known information-theoretic principle designed to pick out quantum correlations from amongst general no-signaling ones. We prove a large-alphabet generalization of this principle, showing that quantum theory provides no advantage in the task of non-local distributed computation of a restricted class of functions with $d$ outcomes for prime $d$, while general no-signaling boxes do. Finally, we consider the question whether there exist two-party tight Bell inequalities with no quantum advantage, and show that the binary non-local computation game inequalities for the restricted class of functions are not facet defining for any number of inputs., Comment: 10 pages

We explore the link between two concepts: the level of violation of a Bell inequality by a quantum state and discrimination between two states by means of restricted classes of operations, such as local operations and classical communication (LOCC) and separable ones. For any bipartite Bell inequality, we show that its value on a given quantum state cannot exceed the classical bound by more than the maximal quantum violation shrunk by a factor related to distinguishability of this state from the separable set by means of some restricted class of operations. We then consider the general scenarios where the parties are allowed to perform a local pre-processing of many copies of the state before the Bell test (asymptotic and hidden-nonlocality scenarios). We define the asymptotic relative entropy of nonlocality and, for PPT states, we bound this quantity by the relative entropy of entanglement of the partially transposed state. The bounds are strong enough to limit the use of certain states containing private key in the device-independent scenario., Comment: 5+4 pages, 1 figure. Theorem 1 extended to Bell inequalities with negative coefficients. Text slightly improved

In this paper we give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions such that quantum players of a two-party {\sc xor} game cannot perform any better than classical players. With any such game, we associate a graph and examine its zero-error communication capacity. This allows us to specify a broad new class of graphs for which the Shannon capacity can be calculated. The conditions also enable the parametrisation of new families of games which have no quantum advantage, for arbitrary input probability distributions up to certain symmetries. In the future, these might be used in information-theoretic studies on reproducing the set of quantum non-local correlations., Comment: 5 pages. Clarified proof of theorem 1, typos corrected

We present a bit commitment protocol based on quantum nonlocality that seems to bring ever-lasting unconditional security. Although security is not rigorously proved, physical arguments and numerical simulations support this conclusion. The key point is that the proof of the commitment is forced to become classical data uncorrelated with anything else. This allows us to circumvent previous impossibility proofs in which it is assumed that classical data can be replaced by quantum data that may be entangled with the committer. The proposed protocol also recovers two features missing in recent "relativistic" quantum bit commitment protocols: (i) the committer can decide if and when she wants to reveal the commitment and (ii) the security of the commitment lasts for arbitrary long time., Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the authors due to an insecurity found in the protocol