Exponential Separation for One-Way Quantum Communication Complexity, with Applications to Cryptography

We give an exponential separation between one-way quantum and classical communication protocols for a partial Boolean function (a variant of the Boolean hidden matching problem of Bar-Yossef et al.). Previously, such an exponential separation was known only for a relational problem. The communication problem corresponds to a strong extractor that fails against a small amount of quantum information about its random source. Our proof uses the Fourier coefficients inequality of Kahn, Kalai, and Linial. We also give a number of applications of this separation. In particular, we show that there are privacy amplification schemes that are secure against classical adversaries but not against quantum adversaries; and we give the first example of a key-expansion scheme in the model of bounded-storage cryptography that is secure against classical memory-bounded adversaries but not against quantum ones.