Paper 2025/2098 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2025/2098 ↗

Optical computing of zero-knowledge proof with single-pixel imaging

Abstract

Optical computing has garnered significant attention in recent years due to its high-speed parallel processing and low power consumption capabilities. It has the potential to replace traditional electronic components and systems for various computation tasks. Among these applications, leveraging optical techniques to address information security issues has emerged as a critical research topic. However, current attempts are predominantly focused on areas such as image encryption and information hiding, with limited exploration of other modern information security concepts, including zero-knowledge proof (ZKP). In this paper, we propose an optical ZKP method based on single-pixel imaging (SPI). By utilizing the flexibility of SPI, our proposed approach can directly acquire randomly permuted results of the source problem's solution in the form of encoded images, thereby encrypting and verifying the original solution. ZKP for the source problem can be realized with optical computing based on a proving protocol without disclosing additional information. Simulated and experimental results show that our proposed method can be effectively applied to two typical ZKP problems: Sudoku and Hamiltonian cycle problem.