Error Tolerance Bound in QKD-Based Quantum Private Query

Most existing quantum private query (QPQ) protocols can hardly work in the presence of noise. The user Alice may obtain a false database item in noisy environments and both participants may cheat under the disguise of noise, so dealing with the noise needs an overall consideration of error correction, user privacy and database security. However, the only two existing protocols aiming to correct errors in QPQ lack such an overall consideration (at least one party’s privacy can be revealed), and they did not estimate what extent of errors can be tolerated (actually, noise is seldom discussed in quantum two-party secure computations, and to the best of our knowledge, relevant bounds on tolerable errors remain unattainable so far). To solve this problem, we first exemplify how one participant reveals the other party’s privacy in the existing QPQ protocols aiming to correct errors. Then we propose a practical protocol which can really work via noisy channel, that is, the error rate of the retrieved database item is reduced significantly and both parties’ privacy are well protected. Besides, we deduce that the final error rate, user privacy and database security are pairwise in a “trade-off” relationship. By balancing them according to the required level of security and reliability, we obtain an upper bound on tolerable errors.