Breaking barriers in two-party quantum cryptography via stochastic semidefinite programming

Quantum 9, 1602 (2025).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2025-01-20-1602

In the last two decades, there has been much effort in finding secure protocols for two-party cryptographic tasks. It has since been discovered that even with quantum mechanics, many such protocols are limited in their security promises. In this work, we use stochastic selection, an idea from stochastic programming, to circumvent such limitations. For example, we find a way to switch between bit commitment, weak coin flipping, and oblivious transfer protocols to improve their security. We also use stochastic selection to turn trash into treasure yielding the first quantum protocol for Rabin oblivious transfer.