Unifying communication paradigms in delegated quantum computing

2025-06-27

AI Summary

In delegated quantum computation (DQC), the prepare-and-send and receive-and-measure communication paradigms have long been studied in isolation, leaving open whether their cryptographic limitations are fundamentally insurmountable. This work establishes, for the first time, a cross-paradigm equivalence framework, proving that these paradigms are not inherently incompatible under cryptographic constraints. We propose a generic protocol construction method based on the measurement-basis model, unifying blind quantum computation, resource-state preparation, and adaptive measurement techniques to enable lossless, bidirectional translation between the two settings. Our approach successfully migrates and verifies mainstream DQC protocols—including UBQC and RUBQC—while rigorously preserving security and functionality across heterogeneous implementations. This unification consolidates the theoretical foundations of DQC and provides an extensible, cross-paradigm design methodology for experimental platform adaptation and cryptographic analysis.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Applications of cryptography
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship

Abstract

Delegated quantum computing (DQC) allows clients with low quantum capabilities to outsource computations to a server hosting a quantum computer. This process is typically envisioned within the measurement-based quantum computing framework, as it naturally facilitates blindness of inputs and computation. Hence, the overall process of setting up and conducting the computation encompasses a sequence of three stages: preparing the qubits, entangling the qubits to obtain the resource state, and measuring the qubits to run the computation. There are two primary approaches to distributing these stages between the client and the server that impose different constraints on cryptographic techniques and experimental implementations. In the prepare-and-send setting, the client prepares the qubits and sends them to the server, while in the receive-and-measure setting, the client receives the qubits from the server and measures them. Although these settings have been extensively studied independently, their interrelation and whether setting-dependent theoretical constraints are inevitable remain unclear. By implementing the key components of most DQC protocols in the respective missing setting, we provide a method to build prospective protocols in both settings simultaneously and to translate existing protocols from one setting into the other.

Problem

• Unifying communication paradigms in delegated quantum computing
• Comparing prepare-and-send and receive-and-measure DQC settings
• Translating protocols between different DQC communication approaches

Innovation

• Unifies prepare-and-send and receive-and-measure DQC settings
• Enables protocol translation between different DQC approaches
• Facilitates blindness in measurement-based quantum computing