An Improved Quantum Anonymous Notification Protocol for Quantum-Augmented Networks

Abstract The scalability of current quantum networks is limited due to noisy quantum components and high implementation costs, thereby limiting the security advantages that quantum networks provide over their classical counterparts. Quantum-augmented networks incorporate quantum components within existing classical networks to improve the noise characteristics and high costs of the former and the security characteristics of the latter. To enable such integration, Quantum Anonymous Notification (QAN) is a method to anonymously inform a receiver of an incoming quantum communication. However, current QAN protocols can be compromised in the presence of several common quantum noises. We propose an improved QAN protocol that utilizes rotation operations on shared GHZ states to produce an anonymous notification in an n-user quantum-augmented network. This mitigates security concerns arising in quantum-augmented networks, such as contextual information leakage and directed attacks on quantum-encrypted packets in the presence of compromised switches.