Hierarchical Quantum Information Splitting with Six-Photon Cluster States

We propose a scheme for hierarchical quantum information splitting with the recently realized six-photon cluster state (Lu et al. in Nat. Phys. 3:91, 2007), where a Boss distributes a quantum secret (quantum state) to five distant agents who are divided into two grades. Two agents are in the upper grade and three agents are in the lower grade. An agent of the upper grade only needs the collaboration of two of the other four agents for getting the secret, while an agent of the lower grade needs the collaboration of all the other four agents. In other words, the agents of two grades have different authorities to recover Boss's secret.