I present a variety of results on the theory of quantum secret sharing. I show that any mixed state quantum secret sharing scheme can be derived by discarding a share from a pure state scheme, and that the size of each share in a quantum secret sharing scheme must be at least as large as the size of the secret. I show that the only constraints on the existence of quantum secret sharing schemes with general access structures are monotonicity (if a set is authorized, so are larger sets) and the no-cloning theorem. I also discuss some aspects of sharing classical secrets using quantum states. In this situation, the size of each share can sometimes be half the size of the classical secret.

• Received 18 October 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.61.042311