IMPROVEMENT OF ONE QUANTUM ENCRYPTION SCHEME

Abstract

Zhou et al. proposed a quantum encryption scheme based on quantum computation in 2006 [N. Zhou et al., Physica A362 (2006) 305]. Each qubit of the ciphertext is constrained to two pairs of conjugate states. So, its implementation is feasible with the existing technology. But it is inefficient since it entails six key bits to encrypt one message bit, and the resulting ciphertext for one message bit consists of three qubits. In addition, its security cannot be directly reduced to the well-known BB84 protocol. In this paper, we improve it using the technique developed in BB84 protocol. The new scheme entails only two key bits to encrypt one message bit. The resulting ciphertext is just composed of two qubits. It saves about a half cost without the loss of security. Moreover, the new scheme is probabilistic instead of deterministic.