Analysis and improvement of the quantum Arnold image scrambling

We investigate the quantum Arnold image scrambling proposed by Jiang et al. (Quantum Inf Process 13(5):1223–1236, 2014). It is aimed to realize Arnold and Fibonacci image scrambling in quantum computer. However, the algorithm does not perceive the particularities of “mod \(2^{n}\) ,” multiply by 2, and subtraction in binary arithmetic. In this paper, a possible simplified version is presented based on 3 theorems and a corollary which represent the particularities of binary arithmetic. The theoretical analysis indicates that the network complexity is dropped from 140n \(\sim \) 168n to 28n \(\sim \) 56n and the unitarity of circuits is not destroyed.