Traceable quantum secret sharing
Phys. Rev. A 114, 042430 – Published 16 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6njj-nvfq
Abstract
Quantum secret sharing protects distributed quantum information against unauthorized reconstruction, yet existing schemes provide no intrinsic accountability when shares are leaked or forged. This missing capability is particularly relevant in realistic distributed settings, where compromised participants may either expose valid shares or maliciously interfere with reconstruction. Here we establish a framework for traceable quantum secret sharing under these two threat models. We introduce leakage-verifiable and traceable quantum secret sharing, which attributes leaked shares through an explicit leakage-verification mechanism, and malicious-traceable and accountable quantum secret sharing, which identifies participants who submit forged shares during reconstruction. We formulate security definitions for both settings and prove that the proposed protocols satisfy the corresponding guarantees against the relevant adversaries. Numerical simulations under per-share depolarizing noise further quantify the robustness of the proposed schemes and identify verification as the dominant noise-sensitive stage. These results incorporate accountability into quantum secret sharing and provide a foundation for traceable distributed quantum cryptography.