Cryptography Reading Group - Pravek Sharma

Thursday, January 27, 2022 11:30 am - 11:30 am EST (GMT -05:00)

Title: Random Self-reducibility of Ideal-SVP via Arakelov Random Walks

Speaker: Pravek Sharma
Affiliation: University of Waterloo
Zoom: Please email Jesse Elliott

Abstract:

Fixing a number field, the space of all ideal lattices, up to isometry, is naturally an Abelian group, called the *Arakelov class group*. This fact, well known to number theorists, has so far not been explicitly used in the literature on lattice-based cryptography. Remarkably, the Arakelov class group is a combination of two groups that have already led to significant cryptanalytic advances: the class group and the unit torus.

In the present article, we show that the Arakelov class group has more to offer. We start with the development of a new versatile tool: we prove that, subject to the Riemann Hypothesis for Hecke LL-functions, certain random walks on the Arakelov class group have a rapid mixing property. We then exploit this result to relate the average-case and the worst-case of the Shortest Vector Problem in ideal lattices. Our reduction appears particularly sharp: for Hermite-SVP in ideal lattices of certain cyclotomic number fields, it loses no more than a O~(n−−√)O~(n) factor on the Hermite approximation factor.

Furthermore, we suggest that this rapid-mixing theorem should find other applications in cryptography and in algorithmic number theory.

See https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/297.