QuICS Special Seminar: Barak Nehoran

Title:  Oracle Separation Between Quantum Commitments and Quantum One-wayness
Speaker:  Barak Nehoran (Princeton University)
Time:  Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - 11:00am
Location:  ATL 3100A and Virtual Via Zoom: https://umd.zoom.us/j/93766584122?pwd=rwvOflvt8Nd9LdaQ5jfArBHjT1CRp9.1

We show that there exists a unitary quantum oracle relative to which quantum commitments exist but no (efficiently verifiable) one-way state generators exist. Both have been widely considered candidates for replacing one-way functions as the minimal assumption for cryptography—the weakest cryptographic assumption implied by all of computational cryptography. Recent work has shown that commitments can be constructed from one-way state generators, but the other direction has remained open. Our results rule out any black-box construction, and thus settle this crucial open problem, suggesting that quantum commitments (as well as its equivalency class of EFI pairs, quantum oblivious transfer, and secure quantum multiparty computation) appear to be strictly weakest among all known cryptographic primitives.

Based on joint work with John Bostanci and Boyang Chen
Link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1568

*We strongly encourage attendees to use their full name (and if possible, their UMD credentials) to join the zoom session.*