A two-party semiquantum simultaneous mutual identity authentication protocol based on four-particle cluster states

In this study, a novel two-party semiquantum simultaneous mutual identity authentication protocol based on four-particle cluster states is constructed. In this protocol, two semi-quantum participants can realize the simultaneous mutual authentication of their identities with the help of a semi-honest third party (TP). The four-particle cluster state adopted by this protocol can be generated by performing a series of Hadamard gates and controlled-not gates on four particles with the initial state |0〉. The protocol doesn’t require the usage of delay lines, quantum entanglement swapping, or quantum teleportation, and only needs two semi-quantum participants to perform the {|0〉,|1〉} basis measurement and prepare the particles within the {|0〉,|1〉} basis. This protocol is proven to be able to resist both the external attack from an outside eavesdropper, such as the impersonation attack, the intercept-resend attack, the measure-resend attack, the Trojan horse attack, the entangle-measure attack, and the internal attack from TP. The correctness of this protocol is validated by the quantum circuit simulation on IBM Qiskit quantum cloud platform.