Classical multi-party secure computation, first proposed by Yao in the millionaires’ problem in the year of 1982, is a fundamental primitive in modern classical cryptography. It aims to calculate a function with different users’ private inputs in a distributed network while ensuring the privacy of private inputs. It has wide applications in private bidding and auctions, secret ballot elections, e-commerce, data mining, etc. However, the security of classical multi-party secure computation is based on the computation complexity assumption, which may be fragile when encountering the powerful quantum parallel computing.
As the quantum counterpart of classical multi-party secure computation, multi-party secure quantum computation, which should abide by the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, such as the uncertainty principle, the non-orthogonal state indistinguishable theorem, the quantum non-cloning theorem, etc, has gained considerable developments during recent years. Since the brand-new concept of semiquantum( by Boyer et al.) was first put forward in the year of 2007, multi-party secure semiquantum computation has also developed rapidly in recent years. Note that in a multi-party secure semiquantum computation method, the classical users are not required to possess full quantum capabilities and are only allowed to perform the following actions: sending qubits, reordering qubits, preparing qubits in the computation basis {|0⟩,|1⟩} and measuring qubits in the computation basis. Recent achievements of multi-party secure quantum and semiquantum computations have greatly aroused the interests of various communities, but there are still many challenges that need to be conquered. For example, multi-party secure quantum and semiquantum computations necessarily involve the design of quantum network, which is still in the initial stage in practice at present.
The main goal of this Research Topic is to provide a platform to exhibit the recent achievements and reveal the future challenges in multiparty secure quantum and semiquantum computations. Both Original Research and Review articles are encouraged. Topics of interest to this collection include, but are not limited to:
• multiparty secure quantum computation, containing multiparty quantum key agreement, multiparty quantum summation, multiparty quantum multiplication, multiparty quantum private comparison, multiparty quantum sealed-bid auction, multiparty quantum voting, multiparty quantum ranking, etc.
• multiparty secure semiquantum computation, containing multiparty semiquantum key agreement, multiparty semiquantum summation, multiparty semiquantum private comparison, multiparty semiquantum sealed-bid auction, multiparty semiquantum voting, etc.
• quantum network and quantum Internet.
Keywords: Multiparty secure quantum computation, multiparty secure semiquantum computation, quantum
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
