Submitted by admin on Mon, 06/10/2024 - 05:00
We investigate the quantum-secure covert-communication capabilities of lossy thermal-noise bosonic channels, the quantum-mechanical model for many practical channels. We determine the expressions for the covert capacity of these channels: Lno-EA, when Alice and Bob share only a classical secret, and LEA, when they benefit from entanglement assistance. We find that entanglement assistance alters the fundamental scaling law for covert communication. Instead of Lno-EA√n - rno-EA(n), rno-EA(n) = o(√n), entanglement assistance allows LEA√nlogn - rEA(n), rEA(n) = o(√nlogn), covert bits to be transmitted reliably over n channel uses.
Christos N. Gagatsos
Michael S. Bullock
Boulat A. Bash