Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 93
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-50882-4

Regular Article

Can relativistic bit commitment lead to secure quantum oblivious transfer?

School of Physics and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, P.R. China

^a e-mail: hegp@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Received: 10 December 2014
Received in final form: 16 February 2015
Published online: 2 April 2015

Abstract

While unconditionally secure bit commitment (BC) is considered impossible within the quantum framework, it can be obtained under relativistic or experimental constraints. Here we study whether such BC can lead to secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT). The answer is not completely negative. In one hand, we provide a detailed cheating strategy, showing that the “honest-but-curious adversaries” in some of the existing no-go proofs on QOT still apply even if secure BC is used, enabling the receiver to increase the average reliability of the decoded value of the transferred bit. On the other hand, it is also found that some other no-go proofs claiming that a dishonest receiver can always decode all transferred bits simultaneously with reliability 100% become invalid in this scenario, because their models of cryptographic protocols are too ideal to cover such a BC-based QOT.