Reusability in Quantum PUF and Biometric Sources
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Quantum Physically Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) and quantum biometric responses offer provably secure authentication primitives whose unclonability is grounded in the laws of quantum mechanics. However, in practicality, the same physical source is often reused across multiple, mutually untrusted systems, raising fundamental questions about privacy leakage, key independence, and long-term security. We have developed a unified information-theoretic framework for reusable QPUF and quantum biometric-based authentication. Reliability, secrecy, inter-system key independence, and privacy leakage are formalized to study two realistic design paradigms: the joint design model and the legacy-compatible incremental design model. For classical–quantum enrollment, single-letter characterizations of the achievable key rate–privacy regions are derived, and explicit coding schemes attaining the bounds are provided. For fully quantum enrollment, multi-letter characterizations are obtained, reflecting the necessity of collective quantum operations. These results are then extended to secret key binding protocols. Our results rigorously quantify the cost of reusability and establish fundamental limits for scalable, privacy-preserving quantum authentication systems.
Authors: Kumar Nilesh, Christian Deppe, Holger Boche
Language: English
Subfield: Hardware and Architecture
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204175102