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Oblivious transfer and quantum channels as communication resources

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Abstract

We show that from a communication-complexity perspective, the primitive called oblivious transfer—which was introduced in a cryptographic context—can be seen as the classical analogue to a quantum channel in the same sense as non-local boxes are of maximally entangled qubits. More explicitly, one realization of non-cryptographic oblivious transfer allows for the perfect simulation of sending one qubit and measuring it in an orthogonal basis. On the other hand, a qubit channel allows for realizing non-cryptographic oblivious transfer with probability roughly 85 %, whereas 75 % is the classical limit.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this work.

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Correspondence to Jürg Wullschleger.

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Gisin, N., Popescu, S., Scarani, V. et al. Oblivious transfer and quantum channels as communication resources. Nat Comput 12, 13–17 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-012-9350-9

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