Pith Number

pith:JOZB35ZR

pith:2026:JOZB35ZRZLPHHKU674OQKTYLQZ

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Covert Signaling for Communication and Sensing over the Bosonic Channels

Boulat A. Bash, Evan J.D. Anderson, Michael S. Bullock, Tianrui Tan

The optimal signal state for minimizing detectability in covert communication and sensing over lossy bosonic channels is a mixture of two consecutive photon-number states.

arxiv:2605.08066 v2 · 2026-05-08 · quant-ph · cs.IT · math.IT

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{JOZB35ZRZLPHHKU674OQKTYLQZ}

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Record completeness

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3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We characterize the input signal state that minimizes detectability. We find an unintuitive optimal quantum state structure: a mixture of just two consecutive photon-number states. In particular, in the low-brightness regime, the optimal signal state is a mixture of vacuum and a single photon.

C2weakest assumption

The analysis assumes the standard lossy thermal-noise bosonic channel model and that the eavesdropper's detection is governed by the square-root law framework without additional side information or non-standard noise statistics.

C3one line summary

Sparse signaling over bosonic channels minimizes detectability with a two-consecutive-photon-number mixture (vacuum plus single photon at low brightness), revealing power thresholds that trade covertness against communication and sensing rates.

Cited by

1 paper in Pith

Toward Practical Two-Way Covert Communication

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-23T03:13:57.769893Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

4bb21df731cade73aa9eff1d054f0b8648cdefdd4b4509bec369909c0c4cb104

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.08066 · arxiv_version: 2605.08066v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.08066 · pith_short_12: JOZB35ZRZLPH · pith_short_16: JOZB35ZRZLPHHKU6 · pith_short_8: JOZB35ZR

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/JOZB35ZRZLPHHKU674OQKTYLQZ \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 4bb21df731cade73aa9eff1d054f0b8648cdefdd4b4509bec369909c0c4cb104

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "663ebabe79ea8f903fe2655d32ef2f94c9634b09fa61cfe7d2ff0110d24f55a1",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.IT",
      "math.IT"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "quant-ph",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-08T17:52:18Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "5fc826083da57fcfed14d9aa03df573262a8005833d50368de082019c1f1c9ee"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.08066",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}