Fundamental Limits of Covert Communication over Classical-Quantum Channels

Abstract: We investigate covert communication over general memoryless classical-quantum channels with fixed finite-size input alphabets. We show that the square root law (SRL) governs covert communication in this setting when product of $n$ input states is used: $L_{\rm SRL}\sqrt{n}+o(\sqrt{n})$ covert bits (but no more) can be reliably transmitted in $n$ uses of classical-quantum channel, where $L_{\rm SRL}>0$ is a channel-dependent constant that we call covert capacity. We also show that ensuring covertness requires $J_{\rm SRL}\sqrt{n}+o(\sqrt{n})$ bits secret shared by the communicating parties prior to transmission, where $J_{\rm SRL}\geq0$ is a channel-dependent constant. We assume a quantum-powerful adversary that can perform an arbitrary joint (entangling) measurement on all $n$ channel uses. We determine the single-letter expressions for $L_{\rm SRL}$ and $J_{\rm SRL}$, and establish conditions when $J_{\rm SRL}=0$ (i.e., no pre-shared secret is needed). Finally, we evaluate the scenarios where covert communication is not governed by the SRL.