About

I am a graduating computer science PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Vipul Goyal. I am funded in part by a CyLab Presidential Fellowship.

My research interest is in quantum cryptography and related questions in quantum complexity, and more broadly, theoretical computer science. I am always happy to discuss any of these topics, or talk about my work. Please feel free to contact me at alpercakan98@gmail.com.

Publications and Preprints (alphabetical author order, as is standard in my area)

• Classical Oracle Separation of QMA from the QCMA Hierarchy and Quantum Cryptography Even When P = QCMA
  Alper Cakan.
  In Submission Manuscript PDF

• Separating QMA from QCIP with a Classical Oracle, or, the Power of Quantum Proofs over Classical Interaction for Quantum Verifiers
  Alper Cakan.
  In Submission · Manuscript PDF

• Separating ClonableQMA and QCMA Relative to a Classical Oracle
  Alper Cakan, Kai-Min Chung, Wei-Hsiang Hung, Tzu-Yi Yang.
  In Submission · arXiv

• Decisional Monogamy-of-Entanglement for Coset States and Applications to Unclonable Cryptography with Correlated Challenges
  Amit Behera, Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal.
  In Submission · arXiv

• Public-Key Quantum Fire and Key-Fire From Classical Oracles
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Omri Shmueli.
  CRYPTO’26 · ePrint
  QCrypt’25 (talk)

• How to Copy-Protect Malleable-Puncturable Cryptographic Functionalities Under Arbitrary Challenge Distributions: A Unified Solution to Quantum Protection
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal.
  EUROCRYPT’26 · ePrint

• Multi-Copy Security in Quantum Cryptography and More
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Fuyuki Kitagawa, Ryo Nishimaki, Takashi Yamakawa.
  CRYPTO’26 · ePrint
  QCrypt’26 (talk)

• Anonymous Public-Key Quantum Money and Universally Verifiable Quantum Voting
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Takashi Yamakawa.
  CRYPTO’26 · ePrint
  QIP’25 (talk) · QCrypt’25 (talk)

• How to Delete Without a Trace: Certified Deniability in a Quantum World
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Justin Raizes.
  CRYPTO’26 · ePrint
  QIP’25 (talk) · QCrypt’26 (talk)

• On the Cryptographic Futility of Non-Collapsing Measurements
  Alper Cakan, Dakshita Khurana, Tomoyuki Morimae, Yuki Shirakawa, Kabir Tomer, Takashi Yamakawa.
  EUROCRYPT’26 · arXiv

• Unbounded Leakage-Resilient Encryption and Signatures
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal.
  Preprint · ePrint

• Unclonable Cryptography with Unbounded Collusions and Impossibility of Hyperefficient Shadow Tomography
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal.
  TCC’24 · ePrint
  TQC’25 (talk) · QCrypt’25 (talk)

• Unbounded Leakage-Resilience and Intrusion-Detection in a Quantum World
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Chen-Da Liu-Zhang, João Ribeiro.
  TCC’24 · ePrint
  TQC’24 (talk)

• Computational Quantum Secret Sharing
  Alper Cakan, Vipul Goyal, Chen-Da Liu-Zhang, João Ribeiro.
  TQC’23 · ePrint

• Linear Threshold Secret-Sharing with Binary Reconstruction
  Marshall Ball, Alper Cakan, Tal Malkin.
  ITC’21 · ECCC

• Importance-Driven Deep Learning System Testing
  (Non-alphabetical) Simos Gerasimou, Hasan Ferit Eniser, Alper Sen, Alper Cakan.
  ICSE’20 · arXiv

Conference Reviews

I have served as an external reviewer or subreviewer for the following venues.

ASIACRYPT (2025, 2026), CRYPTO (2025, 2026), EUROCRYPT (2026, 2027), FOCS (2024), ITC (2025), ITCS (2026), QCrypt (2024), QIP (2025, 2027), Quantum (Journal), RANDOM (2026), STOC (2027), TCC (2021, 2023, 2024, 2026), TQC (2024, 2025, 2026).