A quantum color image encryption scheme based on coupled hyper-chaotic Lorenz system with three impulse injections

In this paper, a quantum color image encryption scheme based on coupled hyper-chaotic Lorenz system with three impulse injections is proposed. Firstly, in order to enhance the complexity of trajectory, three impulse signals values are injected into coupled hyper-chaotic Lorenz system during iterations. Then, six sequences generated from this system are used to encrypt red, green and blue components of the quantum color original image by XOR operations and right cyclic shift operations. Six initial values and three impulse signals values are used as keys, which could reduce the burden of keys transmission and make the cryptosystem own a key space large enough to resist exhaustive attack, even the attack from a quantum computer. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed encryption scheme has a good feasibility and effectiveness for protecting quantum color images and is more secure in comparison with other encryption algorithms.