English

The uncloneable bit exists

Quantum Physics 2026-03-11 v1

Abstract

We establish quantum uncloneable encryption with unconditional security, preventing two non-communicating adversaries from simultaneously decrypting a single ciphertext - even when both are given the key. Our construction achieves security that approaches the ideal limit at a rate that is exponentially small in the security parameter, without employing any assumptions. Our proof invokes quantum information principles in the fully quantum realm, in a novel setting of cryptography. A decoupling step certifies the statistical independence needed for randomness extraction, and monogamy of entanglement, formalised via strong subadditivity, rules out the sender being highly correlated with two non-communicating adversaries at once. Consequently, no coordinated strategy beats random guessing of the encrypted bit, establishing unconditional uncloneability. This reveals the existence of an uncloneable bit in Nature and delineates a fundamental, physically enforced cryptographic primitive unavailable in classical settings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.08916,
  title  = {The uncloneable bit exists},
  author = {Archishna Bhattacharyya and Anne Broadbent and Eric Culf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.08916},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:11:10.554Z