Anonymous Quantum Secret Sharing
Yu‐Guang Yang, Ding‐Zhong Yang, Yuechao Wang, Guang‐Bao Xu, Dong‐Huan Jiang · Advanced Quantum Technologies · 2025
Abstract Secret sharing is a procedure for splitting a secret into several parts so that no subset of parts can reconstruct the secret, but the whole set can. In future quantum networks, enabling the splitting of secrets in an anonymous way is of significant importance for splitting secrets among participants while concealing their identities. Generally, multipartite entangled states such as Greenberger‐Horne‐Zeilinger (GHZ) states or W states are used for anonymously splitting secrets due to their symmetry with respect to the parties. However, no particle loss is tolerable for GHZ states, while only one‐particle loss is tolerable for W states in practical quantum networks. In this paper, an anonymous quantum secret sharing (AQSS) protocol is presented by using single particles and Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen (EPR) pairs. It is provably anonymous under realistic adversarial scenarios. Due to the anonymity of participants, it naturally removes the risk of participant attack, which is the greatest threat to existing quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols. The protocol is compared with existing ones and show that it has a higher ability of particle loss tolerance than existing ones based on multipartite entanglement. The existence of anonymous protocols without multipartite entanglement provides an important pathway for practical applications.