Toward Covert Quantum Computing
Summarize this article with:
Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.14325 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 14 May 2026] Title:Toward Covert Quantum Computing Authors:Evan J. D. Anderson, Kaushik Datta, Boulat A. Bash View a PDF of the paper titled Toward Covert Quantum Computing, by Evan J. D. Anderson and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:As quantum computers become available through multi-tenant cloud platforms, ensuring privacy against adversaries sharing the same quantum processing unit becomes critical. We introduce and explore \emph{covert quantum computing}, a new concept that ensures an adversary with access to all other quantum computational units (QCUs) of a quantum computer cannot detect computation on the subset that they cannot access. Analogous to covert communication, we employ information theory. However, since here the adversary controls the systems used for detection, we require a richer framework for covertness analysis that accounts for the use of quantum memories and adaptive operations. Thus, we adopt the \emph{quantum-strategy} framework used in quantum game theory and memory channel discrimination. Current quantum computers use planar graph circuit layouts and typically assume nearest-neighbor crosstalk. We derive discrete isoperimetric inequalities to show that, for an $n$-qubit circuit under this model, only $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ border qubits provide detection information to the adversary. We then explore this scaling law on IQM's 54-qubit \emph{Emerald} processor and IBM's 156-qubit \emph{ibm\_fez} machine employing the Heron 2 architecture. We implement Ramsey experiments on qubits not used in computation, and detect nearest-neighbor crosstalk, as expected. However, we also observe long-range coupling effects beyond the border qubits, revealing a side channel that the adversary can exploit. We hypothesize that this long-range crosstalk is induced by leakage from the drive and control lines. Beyond weakening covertness, it exposes co-tenants to both adversarial and unintended crosstalk and degrades circuits that span spatially distributed qubits, motivating further work on spatial isolation and crosstalk characterization. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2605.14325 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.14325v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.14325 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Evan Anderson [view email] [v1] Thu, 14 May 2026 03:39:30 UTC (9,207 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Toward Covert Quantum Computing, by Evan J. D. Anderson and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 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?) 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?)