Verification Meets Calibration: Bounds and Secret-Independent State Preparation with an NV-Center as a Case Study

Abstract:Verification protocols provide cryptographic guarantees that the outcome of a delegated quantum computation is correct, a key requirement for scalable and trustworthy quantum computing. A central assumption underlying these protocols is secret independence: the noise affecting state preparation must not depend on the classical secrets that specify the prepared states. In earlier protocols this assumption was enforced by the physical separation of client and server; in the recent on-chip setting it becomes a property of the hardware itself, and one that high-fidelity devices do not automatically satisfy. We first make the requirement quantitative, deriving a bound that shows how residual secret dependence limits the size of any verifiable computation within this framework. Motivated by this, we introduce a calibration framework that enforces secret independence through pulse-level quantum control, producing state preparations that are simultaneously high-fidelity and secret-independent. We assess its performance on a nitrogen-vacancy centre system via emulation, showing that it reduces the secret dependence of the preparations by more than an order of magnitude compared to standard optimal control, and that it is robust against detuning and drive-amplitude errors commonly encountered in experiment. The framework operates entirely at the calibration stage and is platform-agnostic, offering a practical pathway towards verifiable quantum computing at scale.

arXiv:2609.20219 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2609.20219v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.20219 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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