Digital Signatures with Quantum Candies

Abstract

Quantum candies (qandies) represent a type of pedagogical simple model that describes many concepts from quantum information processing (QIP) intuitively without the need to understand or make use of superpositions and without the need of using complex algebra. One of the topics in quantum cryptography that has gained research attention in recent years is quantum digital signatures (QDS), which involve protocols to securely sign classical bits using quantum methods. In this paper, we show how the “qandy model” can be used to describe three QDS protocols in order to provide an important and potentially practical example of the power of “superpositionless” quantum information processing for individuals without background knowledge in the field.