May 19 2021
The research team, led by Academician GUO Guangcan from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with LI Bo from Shangrao Normal University and CHEN Jingling from Nankai University, achieved the masking of optical quantum information. The researchers concealed quantum information into non-local quantum entangled states. The study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Quantum information masking as one of the new information processing protocol transfers quantum information from a single quantum carrier to the quantum entangled state between multiple carriers avoiding the information decode from single quantum carrier. Not all the kind of quantum states can achieve masking, but the variety of that helps people to select.
The quantum information masking can be used in a wide situation, not only in actual quantum information tasks such as quantum secret sharing but also the further understanding in the conservation of quantum information.
In this research, the team realized quantum information masking for the first time based on the linear optics research platform.
Compared with the theoretical value, the fidelity of the entangled state can be 97.7%, meaning that the secure transmission of simple images can be complete for the three-party quantum secret sharing based on quantum information masking.
This study has great significance for theoretical research and practical application of secure quantum communication. Based on it, the feasibility of quantum information masking as a brand-new quantum information processing protocol is improved.