We construct an index for BPS operators supported on a ray in five dimensional superconformal field theories with exceptional global symmetries. We compute the E_n representations (for n = 2, . . . , 7) of operators of low spin, thus verifying that while the expression for the index is only SO(2n − 2) × U(1) invariant, the index itself exhibits the full E_n symmetry (at least up to the order we expanded). The ray operators we studied in 5d can be viewed as generalizations of operators constructed in a Yang-Mills theory with fundamental matter by attaching an open Wilson line to a quark. For n ≤ 7, in contrast to local operators, they carry nontrivial charge under the ℤ_{9 − n}  ⊂ E_n center of the global symmetry. The representations that appear in the ray operator index are therefore different, for n ≤ 7, from those appearing in the previously computed superconformal index. For 3 ≤ n ≤ 7, we find that the leading term in the index is a character of a minuscule representation of E_n . We also discuss the case n = 8, which presents a unique technical challenge, and remains an open problem.

Multivariate Cryptography, as one of the main candidates for establishing post-quantum cryptosystems, provides strong, efficient and well-understood digital signature schemes such as UOV, Rainbow, and Gui. While Gui provides very short signatures, it is, for efficiency reasons, restricted to very small finite fields, which makes it hard to scale it to higher levels of security and leads to large key sizes. In this paper we propose a signature scheme called HMFEv (“Hidden Medium Field Equations”), which can be seen as a multivariate version of HFEv. We obtain our scheme by applying the Vinegar Variation to the MultiHFE encryption scheme of Chen et al. We show both theoretically and by experiments that our new scheme is secure against direct and Rank attacks. In contrast to other schemes of the HFE family such as Gui, HMFEv can be defined over arbitrary base fields and therefore is much more efficient in terms of both performance and memory requirements. Our scheme is therefore a good candidate for the upcoming standardization of post-quantum signature schemes.

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