Quantum secret sharing protocol through noisy channel with application in visual cryptography

This study presents a quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol designed using Grover's search algorithm in a noisy environment. The proposed protocol utilizes Grover's three-particle quantum state. The proposed scheme is divided into secret information sharing and eavesdropping checking. The dealer prepares an encoded state by encoding the classical information as a marked state and shares the states' qubits between three participants. Using the amplitude-damping noise and the phase-damping noise as conventional noisy channels, it can be demonstrated that secret information can be conveyed between participants with some information lost. The security analysis shows the scheme is stringent against malicious participants or eavesdroppers. The simulation analysis is done on the cloud platform IBM-QE thereby showing the practical feasibility of the scheme. Finally, an application of the proposed scheme is demonstrated in visual cryptography using the GNEQR representation of images.