Classification of quantum authentication protocols and calculation of their complexity

In this paper, we aim at presenting a detailed classification of the most known authentication protocols using quantum means with calculation of quantum communication complexity. The Quantum Key Distribution protocols were basically proposed to establish secret keys that will be used later for encrypting and decrypting messages. Practically, QKD protocols are vulnerable against the men-in-middle attack. Thereby, in order to prevent masquerading any legitimate user and tampering with the communication, QKD schemes need authentication prior to communication. Many quantum authentication protocols have been proposed in the literature. Each one has a particular approach to authenticate the communicators. We attempt in the present work to introduce the various ways of quantum authentication and to classify them according to some specific criteria with a calculation of the quantum communication complexity.