{
  "abstract": "GHZ-based conference key agreement distributes a shared key to $N$ parties in one network use, whereas pairwise BB84 needs $N-1$. The survival of that advantage has been studied against party number, loss, and topology, but almost always with the channel fixed at depolarizing. Simulating both protocols exactly for $N = 3, 4, 5$ under dephasing, amplitude damping, and depolarizing noise, we find the crossover is set by the channel's Pauli error composition, not its identity: normalized to average infidelity, amplitude damping and depolarizing agree to within about 1\\% at each group size, while dephasing can tolerate roughly $2.4\\times$ more at $N = 3$. We derive a closed-form rate for arbitrary per-party Pauli noise and use it to prove that concentrating a fixed noise budget on one arm is strictly worse than spreading it, and that giving the dealer role to the cleanest arm improves the rate by roughly 18\\%. One structural fact drives every result: the phase-error term is a product over all $N$ arms, while the bit-error term stays local to a pair.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.07251",
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Ryder Carlson"
    },
    {
      "name": "Lochlan Fitzgerald"
    },
    {
      "name": "Kidus Peter"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wilson Smith"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bv5fx0mdf2qn4.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.07251",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "bv5fx0mdf2qn4",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07251",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-SA-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.CR"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.NI"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Quantum Information and Cryptography"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220970485",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.07251",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-05",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bv5fx0mdf2qn4.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
      "native_id": "2610.07251",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07251"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Pauli Error Composition Determines the Multipartite Advantage in Conference Key Agreement",
  "title_text": "Pauli Error Composition Determines the Multipartite Advantage in Conference Key Agreement",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bv5fx0mdf2qn4",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}