Evaluating Effective Quantum PUF Circuits for Authentication Applications

As quantum technologies advance, ensuring secure authentication of quantum devices has become increasingly important. Existing methods, often relying on stored cryptographic keys, are vulnerable to physical and side-channel attacks. Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) offer a promising alternative by leveraging quantum phenomena such as superposition, entanglement, and quantum noise to produce unique, unclonable responses. However, many existing QPUF designs are based on simulations or report only idealized, best-case results. This work presents and evaluates a set of QPUF circuits on IBM’s real quantum hardware, assessing their performance in terms of instability, randomness, and uniqueness to identify the most effective configurations. Our results show that specific configurations can achieve a positive balance between stability and device distinguishability, reaching 0.05 instability, 0.48 uniqueness, and 0.75 randomness. These findings provide a solid foundation for implementing robust authentication protocols tailored for quantum devices in real-world settings.