Secure authentication via Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions: a review

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09296v2
• Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2025 20:56:33 GMT
• Title: Secure authentication via Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions: a review
• Authors: Pol Julià Farré, Vladlen Galetsky, Mohamed Belhassen, Gregor Pieplow, Kumar Nilesh, Holger Boche, Tim Schröder, Janis Nötzel, Christian Deppe,
• Abstract summary: Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) offer a physically grounded approach to secure authentication.<n>This review covers their theoretical foundations and key implementation challenges.
• Score: 34.60544883743689
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) offer a physically grounded approach to secure authentication, extending the capabilities of classical PUFs. This review covers their theoretical foundations and key implementation challenges - such as quantum memories and Haar-randomness -, and distinguishes QPUFs from Quantum Readout PUFs (QR-PUFs), more experimentally accessible yet less robust against quantum-capable adversaries. A co-citation-based selection method is employed to trace the evolution of QPUF architectures, from early QR-PUFs to more recent Hybrid PUFs (HPUFs). This method further supports a discussion on the role of information-theoretic analysis in mitigating inconsistencies in QPUF responses, underscoring the deep connection between secret-key generation and authentication. Despite notable advances, achieving practical and robust QPUF-based authentication remains an open challenge.

Related papers

• Non-unitary Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions: Modelling, Simulation, and Evaluation under Open Quantum Dynamics [1.1470070927586018]
  Quantum mechanics naturally supports the goal through intrinsic randomness and the no-cloning theorem.<n>This work introduces a new class of non-unitary QPUFs that leverage open quantum system dynamics as a foundation for security.<n>Three architectures are proposed: the Dissipative QPUF (D-QPUF), which uses amplitude damping as an entropy source; the Measurement-Feedback QPUF (MF-QPUF), which employs mid-circuit measurements and conditional unitaries; and the Lindbladian QPUF (L-QPUF), which models Markovian noise via the Lindblad master equation and Trotter
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-11-03T12:26:59Z)
• Quantum Physical Unclonable Function based on Chaotic Hamiltonians [34.406660808435724]
  Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) are hardware-based cryptographic primitives with strong theoretical security.<n>Previous work tackled this using pseudo-random unitary designs but only under limited adversarial models with only black-box query access.<n>We propose a new QPUF construction based on chaotic quantum dynamics.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-08-31T21:53:17Z)
• Existential Unforgeability in Quantum Authentication From Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions Based on Random von Neumann Measurement [45.386403865847235]
  Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) leverage inherent, non-clonable physical randomness to generate unique input-output pairs.<n>Quantum PUFs (QPUFs) extend this concept by using quantum states as input-output pairs.<n>We show that random unitary QPUFs cannot achieve existential unforgeability against Quantum Polynomial Time adversaries.<n>We introduce a second model where the QPUF functions as a nonunitary quantum channel, which guarantees existential unforgeability.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-04-17T12:16:41Z)
• GQHAN: A Grover-inspired Quantum Hard Attention Network [53.96779043113156]
  Grover-inspired Quantum Hard Attention Mechanism (GQHAM) is proposed. GQHAN adeptly surmounts the non-differentiability hurdle, surpassing the efficacy of extant quantum soft self-attention mechanisms. The proposal of GQHAN lays the foundation for future quantum computers to process large-scale data, and promotes the development of quantum computer vision.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-01-25T11:11:16Z)
• Foundations of Quantum Federated Learning Over Classical and Quantum Networks [59.121263013213756]
  Quantum federated learning (QFL) is a novel framework that integrates the advantages of classical federated learning (FL) with the computational power of quantum technologies. QFL can be deployed over both classical and quantum communication networks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-10-23T02:56:00Z)
• Learning Classical Readout Quantum PUFs based on single-qubit gates [9.669942356088377]
  We formalize the class of Classical Readout Quantum PUFs (CR-QPUFs) using the statistical query (SQ) model. We show insufficient security for CR-QPUFs based on singlebit rotation gates, when adversary has SQ access to the CR-QPUF. We demonstrate how a malicious party can learn CR-QPUF characteristics and forge the signature of a quantum device.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-12-13T13:29:22Z)
• Quantum Lock: A Provable Quantum Communication Advantage [2.9562795446317964]
  This paper proposes a generic design of provably secure PUFs, called hybrid locked PUFs(HLPUFs) An HLPUF uses a classical PUF, and encodes the output into non-orthogonal quantum states to hide the outcomes of the underlying CPUF from any adversary. We show that by exploiting non-classical properties of quantum states, the HLPUF allows the server to reuse the challenge-response pairs for further client authentication.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-10-18T17:01:46Z)
• Quantum Federated Learning with Quantum Data [87.49715898878858]
  Quantum machine learning (QML) has emerged as a promising field that leans on the developments in quantum computing to explore large complex machine learning problems. This paper proposes the first fully quantum federated learning framework that can operate over quantum data and, thus, share the learning of quantum circuit parameters in a decentralized manner.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-05-30T12:19:27Z)
• Quantum circuit architecture search for variational quantum algorithms [88.71725630554758]
  We propose a resource and runtime efficient scheme termed quantum architecture search (QAS) QAS automatically seeks a near-optimal ansatz to balance benefits and side-effects brought by adding more noisy quantum gates. We implement QAS on both the numerical simulator and real quantum hardware, via the IBM cloud, to accomplish data classification and quantum chemistry tasks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-10-20T12:06:27Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.