Obfuscation of Arbitrary Quantum Circuits

Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.08969 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 13 Jan 2026] Title:Obfuscation of Arbitrary Quantum Circuits Authors:Miryam Mi-Ying Huang, Er-Cheng Tang View a PDF of the paper titled Obfuscation of Arbitrary Quantum Circuits, by Miryam Mi-Ying Huang and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Program obfuscation aims to conceal a program's internal structure while preserving its functionality. A central open problem is whether an obfuscation scheme for arbitrary quantum circuits exists. Despite several efforts having been made toward this goal, prior works have succeeded only in obfuscating quantum circuits that implement either pseudo-deterministic functions or unitary transformations. Although unitary transformations already include a broad class of quantum computation, many important quantum tasks, such as state preparation and quantum error-correction, go beyond unitaries and fall within general completely positive trace-preserving maps. In this work, we construct the first quantum ideal obfuscation scheme for arbitrary quantum circuits that support quantum inputs and outputs in the classical oracle model assuming post-quantum one-way functions, thereby resolving an open problem posed in Bartusek et al. (STOC 2023), Bartusek, Brakerski, and Vaikuntanathan (STOC 2024), and Huang and Tang (FOCS 2025). At the core of our construction lies a novel primitive that we introduce, called the subspace-preserving strong pseudorandom unitary (spsPRU). An spsPRU is a family of efficient unitaries that fix every vector in a given linear subspace $S$, while acting as a Haar random unitary on the orthogonal complement $S^\perp$ under both forward and inverse oracle queries. Furthermore, by instantiating the classical oracle model with the ideal obfuscation scheme for classical circuits proposed by Jain et al. (CRYPTO 2023) and later enhanced by Bartusek et al. (arXiv:2510.05316), our obfuscation scheme can also be realized in the quantumly accessible pseudorandom oracle model. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2601.08969 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.08969v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.08969 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Miryam Mi-Ying Huang [view email] [v1] Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:28:49 UTC (65 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Obfuscation of Arbitrary Quantum Circuits, by Miryam Mi-Ying Huang and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 Change to browse by: cs cs.CR References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)