Classifying informative subsets in qudit-encrypted cloning via congruence systems
Phys. Rev. A 114, 052422 – Published 10 November, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z468-6mz9
Abstract
Encrypted cloning offers a means of introducing redundancy into quantum storage while respecting the no-cloning theorem: an unknown state is encoded into multiple signal-noise pairs, and only authorized subsets can recover the original information. However, the leakage properties of unauthorized subsets, particularly for higher-dimensional systems (qudits), have remained unexplored. In this work, we systematically classify the informative subsets of the storage register in the qudit encrypted-cloning protocol. We focus on unauthorized subsets of size that contain exactly one qudit from each signal-noise pair. We show that the presence or absence of information leakage is determined by the solution set of a system of congruences whose coefficients depend on the dimension and on the numbers of signal and noise qudits in the subset. The reduced state is completely uninformative if and only if the congruence system admits only the trivial solution; otherwise, it retains a residual dependence on the input state through specific generalized Pauli operators. Low-dimensional examples () are worked out explicitly, and the complete classification is expressed in terms of a greatest-common-divisor condition. Our results extend the parity-based classification known for qubits () to arbitrary finite dimensions, revealing a dimension-dependent boundary of confidentiality in encrypted cloning. Finally, the modified protocol makes the joint quantum-classical state of every unauthorized subset independent of the input. For the aligned unauthorized subsets containing exactly one qudit from each signal-noise pair, the quantum marginal is, in addition, maximally mixed.