Communication efficient quantum secret sharing

Abstract

In the standard model of quantum secret sharing, typically, one is interested in minimal authorized sets for the reconstruction of the secret. In such a setting, reconstruction requires the communication of all the shares of the corresponding authorized set. If we allow for non-minimal authorized sets, then we can trade off the size of the authorized sets with the amount of communication required for reconstruction. Based on the staircase codes, proposed by Bitar and El Rouayheb, we propose a class of quantum threshold secret sharing schemes that are also communication efficient. We call them $((k,2k-1,d))$ communication efficient quantum secret sharing schemes where $k\leq d\leq2k-1$. Using the proposed construction, we can recover a secret of $d-k+1$ qudits by communicating $d$ qudits whereas using the standard $((k,2k-1))$ quantum secret sharing requires $k(d-k+1)$ qudits to be communicated. In other words, to share a secret of one qudit, the standard quantum secret sharing requires $k$ qudits whereas the proposed schemes communicate only $\frac{d}{d-k+1}$ qudits per qudit in the communication complexity. Proposed schemes can reduce communication overheads by a factor $O(k)$ with respect to standard schemes, when $d$ equals $2k-1$. Further, we show that our schemes have optimal communication cost for secret reconstruction.