A novel quantum information hiding protocol based on entanglement swapping of high-level Bell states

Using entanglement swapping of high-level Bell states, we first derive a covert layer between the secret message and the possible output results of the entanglement swapping between any two generalized Bell states, and then propose a novel high-efficiency quantum information hiding protocol based on the covert layer. In the proposed scheme, a covert channel can be built up under the cover of a high-level quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) channel for securely transmitting secret messages without consuming any auxiliary quantum state or any extra communication resource. It is shown that this protocol not only has a high embedding efficiency but also achieves a good imperceptibility as well as a high security. (paper)