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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Phys.
Sec. Quantum Engineering and Technology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1542675

Efficient (k, n) threshold semi-quantum secret sharing protocol

Provisionally accepted
Jie Cao Jie Cao 1Jinchao Xu Jinchao Xu 2*
  • 1 School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tongling University, Tongling, Anhui, China
  • 2 School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Most (k, n) threshold quantum secret sharing protocols are fully quantum, the message receivers have to be equipped with complex quantum devices so as to prepare various quantum resources and perform complex quantum operations, which may affect the practice of these protocols. On the other hand, the qubit efficiency of most (k, n) threshold quantum secret sharing protocols is not more than 1/2. To simplify the (k, n) threshold quantum secret sharing protocol and improve its practice and qubit efficiency, a new (k, n) threshold secret sharing protocol with semi-quantum properties is proposed. In this protocol, the dealer prepares decoy particles and sends them to the receivers. The receivers insert particles carrying secret information along with Z-basis decoy particles into the received particles sequence to generate mixed-particle sequences, which are sent back to the dealer. The dealer measures the received particle sequences to check for eavesdropping and establishes shared secret keys with the receivers. With the shared secret keys, the dealer distributes the secret pieces among the receivers using Shamir’s secret sharing scheme. Multiple secret messages can be recovered by k or more receivers. The qubit efficiency of our protocol is k/n. For a (n, n) threshold protocol, the qubit efficiency would be 100%. The proposed scheme is based on single particles, without using any entangled system. Therefore, its quantum resources are relatively easy to prepare. Receivers only need to prepare simple Z-basis qubits. Its semi-quantum properties enhance practices implementation. The proposed protocol has robust security against various types of attack, including eavesdropping attack, internal attack and collusion attack. Furthermore, it can resist the unitary attack which is seldom analyzed in other protocols.

    Keywords: security, Secret sharing protocol, (k,n) hreshold, Semi-quantum properties, multisecret messages

    Received: 10 Dec 2024; Accepted: 27 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Cao and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jinchao Xu, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.