Secure Grouping Protocol Using a Deck of Cards

We consider a problem, which we call secure grouping, of dividing a number of parties into some subsets (groups) in the following manner: Each party has to know the other members of his/her group, while he/she may not know anything about how the remaining parties are divided (except for certain public predetermined constraints, such as the number of parties in each group). In this paper, we construct an information-theoretically secure protocol using a deck of physical cards to solve the problem, which is jointly executable by the parties themselves without a trusted third party. Despite the non-triviality and the potential usefulness of the secure grouping, our proposed protocol is fairly simple to describe and execute. Our protocol is based on algebraic properties of conjugate permutations. A key ingredient of our protocol is our new techniques to apply multiplication and inverse operations to hidden permutations (i.e., those encoded by using face-down cards), which would be of independent interest and would have various potential applications.

Signed-eliminable graphs and free multiplicities on the braid arrangement

We define specific multiplicities on the braid arrangement by using edge-bicolored graphs. To consider their freeness, we introduce the notion of bicolor-eliminable graphs as a generalization of Stanleys classification theory of free graphic arrangements by chordal graphs. This generalization gives us a complete classification of the free multiplicities defined above. As an application, we prove one direction of a conjecture of Athanasiadis on the characterization of the freeness of the deformation of the braid arrangement in terms of directed graphs.

Polynomial expressions of $p$-ary auction functions

Let $mathbb{F}_p$ be the finite field of prime order $p$. For any function $f colon mathbb{F}_p{}^n to mathbb{F}_p$, there exists a unique polynomial over $mathbb{F}_p$ having degree at most $p-1$ with respect to each variable which coincides with $f$. We call it the minimal polynomial of $f$. It is in general a non-trivial task to find a concrete expression of the minimal polynomial of a given function, which has only been worked out for limited classes of functions in the literature. In this paper, we study minimal polynomial expressions of several functions that are closely related to some practically important procedures such as auction and voting.

Polynomial Expressions of Carries in p-ary Arithmetics

It is known that any $n$-variable function on a finite prime field of characteristic $p$ can be expressed as a polynomial over the same field with at most $p^n$ monomials. However, it is not obvious to determine the polynomial for a given concrete function. In this paper, we study the concrete polynomial expressions of the carries in addition and multiplication of $p$-ary integers. For the case of addition, our result gives a new family of symmetric polynomials, which generalizes the known result for the binary case $p = 2$ where the carries are given by elementary symmetric polynomials. On the other hand, for the case of multiplication of $n$ single-digit integers, we give a simple formula of the polynomial expression for the carry to the next digit using the Bernoulli numbers, and show that it has only $(n+1)(p-1)/2 + 1$ monomials, which is significantly fewer than the worst-case number $p^n$ of monomials for general functions. We also discuss applications of our results to cryptographic computation on encrypted data.

A mathematical problem for security analysis of hash functions and pseudorandom generators

In this paper, we specify a class of mathematical problems, which we refer to as Function Density Problems (FDPs, in short), and point out novel connections of FDPs to the following two cryptographic topics; theoretical security evaluations of keyless hash functions (such as SHA-1), and constructions of provably secure pseudorandom generators (PRGs) with some enhanced security property introduced by Dubrov and Ishai [STOC 2006]. Our argument aims at proposing new theoretical frameworks for these topics (especially for the former) based on FDPs, rather than providing some concrete and practical results on the topics. We also give some examples of mathematical discussions on FDPs, which would be of independent interest from mathematical viewpoints. Finally, we discuss possible directions of future research on other cryptographic applications of FDPs and on mathematical studies on FDPs themselves.

On finite factors of centralizers of parabolic subgroups in Coxeter groups

It has been known that the centralizer $Z_W(W_I)$ of a parabolic subgroup $W_I$ of a Coxeter group $W$ is a split extension of a naturally defined reflection subgroup by a subgroup defined by a 2-cell complex $mathcal{Y}$. In this paper, we study the structure of $Z_W(W_I)$ further and show that, if $I$ has no irreducible components of type $A_n$ with $2 leq n < infty$, then every element of finite irreducible components of the inner factor is fixed by a natural action of the fundamental group of $mathcal{Y}$. This property has an application to the isomorphism problem in Coxeter groups.

Physical Equivalence of Pure States and Derivation of Qubit in General Probabilistic Theories

In this paper, we investigate a characterization of Quantum Mechanics by two physical principles based on general probabilistic theories. We first give the operationally motivated definition of the physical equivalence of states and consider the principle of the physical equivalence of pure states, which turns out to be equivalent to the symmetric structure of the state space. We further consider another principle of the decomposability with distinguishable pure states. We give classification theorems of the state spaces for each principle, and derive the Bloch ball in 2 and 3 dimensional systems by these principles.

On affine maps on non-compact convex sets and some characterizations of finite-dimensional solid ellipsoids

Convex geometry has recently attracted great attention as a framework to formulate general probabilistic theories. In this framework, convex sets and affine maps represent the state spaces of physical systems and the possible dynamics, respectively. In the first part of this paper, we present a result on separation of simplices and balls (up to affine equivalence) among all compact convex sets in two- and three-dimensional Euclidean spaces, which focuses on the set of extreme points and the action of affine transformations on it. Regarding the above-mentioned axiomatization of quantum physics, our result corresponds to the case of simplest (2-level) quantum system. We also discuss a possible extension to higher dimensions. In the second part, towards generalizations of the framework of general probabilistic theories and several existing results including ones in the first part from the case of compact and finite-dimensional physical systems as in most of the literatures to more general cases, we study some fundamental properties of convex sets and affine maps that are relevant to the above subject.

Short collusion-secure fingerprint codes against three pirates

In this article, we propose a new construction of probabilistic collusion-secure fingerprint codes against up to three pirates and give a theoretical security evaluation. Our pirate tracing algorithm combines a scoring method analogous to Tardos codes (J. ACM, 2008) with an extension of parent search techniques of some preceding 2-secure codes. Numerical examples show that our code lengths are significantly shorter than (about 30% to 40% of) the shortest known c-secure codes by Nuida et al. (Des. Codes Cryptogr., 2009) with c = 3. Some preliminary proposal for improving efficiency of our tracing algorithm is also given.

Locally parabolic subgroups in Coxeter groups of arbitrary ranks

Despite the significance of the notion of parabolic closures in Coxeter groups of finite ranks, the parabolic closure is not guaranteed to exist as a parabolic subgroup in a general case. In this paper, first we give a concrete example to clarify that the parabolic closure of even an irreducible reflection subgroup of countable rank does not necessarily exist as a parabolic subgroup. Then we propose a generalized notion of locally parabolic closure by introducing a notion of locally parabolic subgroups, which involves parabolic ones as a special case, and prove that the locally parabolic closure always exists as a locally parabolic subgroup. It is a subgroup of parabolic closure, and we give another example to show that the inclusion may be strict in general. Our result suggests that locally parabolic closure has more natural properties and provides more information than parabolic closure. We also give a result on maximal locally finite, locally parabolic subgroups in Coxeter groups, which generalizes a similar well-known fact on maximal finite parabolic subgroups.