Key Agreement and Oblivious Transfer from Free-Energy Limitations

Abstract: We propose one of the very few constructive consequences of the second law of thermodynamics. More specifically, we present protocols for secret-key establishment and multiparty computation the security of which is based fundamentally on Landauer's principle. The latter states that the erasure cost of each bit of information is at least kTln2 (where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the absolute temperature of the environment). Albeit impractical, our protocols explore the limits of reversible computation, and the only assumption about the adversary is her inability to access a quantity of free energy that is exponential in the one of the honest participants. Our results generalize to the quantum realm.