Ternary quantum public-key cryptography based on qubit rotation

Quantum public-key cryptography (QPKC) can perform the management and distribution of keys in a large-scale quantum communication network, thus being the foundation for many cryptographic applications. The QPKC system, which uses qubit rotation as a quantum one-way function, is one of the most practical public key systems and has found many valuable extensions. In this paper, we analyze and provide supplementary properties of binary qubit rotation. On the basis of Nikolopoulos’work (Phys Rev A 77(3):032348, 2008), we have extended the qubit rotation to three dimensions and propose a ternary QPKC protocol. The protocol can resist forward search attack and achieve higher security than binary QPKC protocol. Theoretically, the protocol can be extended to a higher dimension.