Standard (k, n)-threshold hierarchical quantum secret sharing

Hierarchical quantum secret sharing has important theoretical value and realistic significance in quantum secret sharing schemes. In order to expand the access structure of participants and improve the performance of schemes, this paper presents a standard (k, n)-threshold hierarchical quantum secret sharing scheme. Firstly, we construct a specific pair of orthogonal entangled states and use their local distinguishable property to achieve the standard (k, n)-threshold structure at each level in the hierarchy, which not only enhances the practical value of hierarchical quantum secret sharing schemes, but also reduces the computational expenses. Secondly, our scheme does not require any quantum operations to recover the secret during the reconstruction phase, which greatly reduces the quantum computational complexity. Finally, performance analysis shows that our scheme owns higher information efficiency compared with the existing schemes. Security analysis shows that our scheme is resistant to not only a series of typical external attacks but also both personal attacks from dishonest internal participants and collusion attacks.