1. Zhengzhou Information Science and Technology Institute, Zhengzhou 450000, China 2. CAS Centre for Excellence and Synergetic Innovation Centre in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China 3. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Quantum computing has undergone rapid development in recent years. Owing to limitations on scalability, personal quantum computers still seem slightly unrealistic in the near future. The first practical quantum computer for ordinary users is likely to be on the cloud. However, the adoption of cloud computing is possible only if security is ensured. Homomorphic encryption is a cryptographic protocol that allows computation to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting them, so it is well suited to cloud computing. Here, we first applied homomorphic encryption on IBM’s cloud quantum computer platform. In our experiments, we successfully implemented a quantum algorithm for linear equations while protecting our privacy. This demonstration opens a feasible path to the next stage of development of cloud quantum information technology.
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