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Encrypted Qubits can be Cloned

Quantum Physics 2026-01-16 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We show that encrypted cloning of unknown quantum states is possible. Any number of encrypted clones of a qubit can be created through a unitary transformation, and each of the encrypted clones can be decrypted through a unitary transformation. The decryption of an encrypted clone consumes the decryption key, i.e., only one decryption is possible, in agreement with the no-cloning theorem. Encrypted cloning represents a new paradigm that provides a form of redundancy, parallelism or scalability where direct duplication is forbidden by the no-cloning theorem. For example, a possible application of encrypted cloning is to enable encrypted quantum multi-cloud storage.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.02757,
  title  = {Encrypted Qubits can be Cloned},
  author = {Koji Yamaguchi and Achim Kempf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.02757},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:57:10.855Z