The uncloneable bit exists
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.
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