Quantum

Evaluating Quantum Circuit Protection Methods After Compilation: An Empirical Comparison

Read full article at source ↗

Based on a feed excerpt; full article content has not been acquired. Source evidence retrieved 13/11/2026, 07:43:25 UTC.

Briefings

A new empirical study compares four quantum obfuscation schemes (ObfusQate variants, ECQCO, and Q-MaskCut) against a single compilation protocol at optimization level 3. The research evaluates whether these methods successfully hide circuit structure from cloud providers, measuring structural disguise via normalized graph edit distance and output fidelity. Key findings indicate that while Q-MaskCut maintains high output fidelity and structural disguise without noise, its protection degrades significantly after a second compilation by the provider, leaving the output readable. Other schemes like ECQCO failed to hide the output, and ObfusQate variants either failed to hide structure or increased execution time substantially.

Key points

• Q-MaskCut successfully hides the output of quantum circuits with a mean total variation distance of 0.94 without noise, maintaining high fidelity comparable to the original circuit.
• ECQCO's output could not be decoded with the implementation provided by its authors, indicating a failure to maintain structural disguise after compilation.

Context

Quantum cloud providers can read circuits and their outputs, yet existing methods for hiding circuits are typically evaluated on the circuit as written before compilation optimizes it. This study addresses this gap by evaluating protection methods specifically against a realistic compilation protocol at optimization level 3, testing whether the disguise survives a second compilation by the provider.

Limitations

The study simulates 11 circuits of 3 to 19 qubits without noise and on two noise models, with results limited to these specific configurations. The research does not account for real-world noise beyond the two tested models, and the evaluation assumes a single compilation protocol at optimization level 3, which may not reflect all possible compilation variations.

Generated by Bittrees-hosted qwen35-2b sha256:aaf42c8b7c3c on 13/11/2026, 07:50:39 UTC. Based on publisher-provided feed evidence; may not cover the full original article. Check the source for details.

View archived briefing on IPFS
bafybeif4quqe3czkf5izdeawjp7hvhrnah6ve5wtpoxsqrgiy2fupfakfa