Black-Hole Radiation Decoding Is Quantum Cryptography

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We propose to study equivalence relations between phenomena in high-energy physics and the existence of standard cryptographic primitives, and show the first example where such an equivalence holds. A small number of prior works showed that high-energy phenomena can be explained by cryptographic hardness. Examples include using the existence of one-way functions to explain the hardness of decoding black-hole Hawking radiation (Harlow and Hayden 2013, Aaronson 2016), and using pseudorandom quantum states to explain the hardness of computing AdS/CFT dictionary (Bouland, Fefferman and Vazirani, 2020). In this work we show, for the former example of black-hole radiation decoding, that it also implies the existence of secure quantum cryptography. In fact, we show an existential equivalence between the hardness of black-hole radiation decoding and a variety of cryptographic primitives, including bit-commitment schemes and oblivious transfer protocols (using quantum communication). This can be viewed (with proper disclaimers, as we discuss) as providing a physical justification for the existence of secure cryptography. We conjecture that such connections may be found in other high-energy physics phenomena.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2023 - 43rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2023, Proceedings
EditorsHelena Handschuh, Anna Lysyanskaya
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media B.V.
Pages37-65
Number of pages29
ISBN (Print)9783031385537
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
EventAdvances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2023 - 43rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2023, Proceedings - Santa Barbara, United States
Duration: 20 Aug 202324 Aug 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume14085 LNCS

Conference

ConferenceAdvances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2023 - 43rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2023, Proceedings
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Barbara
Period20/08/2324/08/23

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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