Tag Archives: Quantum Cryptography

A New Approach to Quantum Random Number Generators and news on Quantum Cryptography

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I am still interested in developements in the area of Quantum phenomena which can be used in ICT and in particular in ICT Security. Recently there have been quite a few announcements of interest. Here are a some of them:

  • A scientific paper proposes on a new way of generating Quantum Random Number, that is ‘real random numbers’ (whatever that means) by using every day technology like the camera of our smart phone; this does not mean that the smart phone camera is enough to produce real random numbers (for the moment you still need a computer to process the data produced by it) but it is a sign that the technology is providing us with tools of unprecedented power, and soon our smart phone will be enough for a good many things;
  • New developments in Quantum Cryptography (se here and here for details) would make it easier to implement Quantum Cryptography in practice; this is nice, even if it does not changes dramatically the current status and relevance of Quantum Cryptography;
  • Another article (see here for a comment) leaves me instead quite puzzled: either I don’t understand it or there is something fundamentally flawed in the argument otherwise it will look like it is possible to obtain quantum effects in classical physics, which is just what it is not.

Ross Anderson, Quantum Computing and fundamental Quantum Mechanics

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It has just been published here a paper by Ross Anderson and Robert Brady on Quantum Computing, Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Mechanics.

I personally know some of the people mentioned in the paper and who worked for many years on these aspects of fundamental Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics. Without discussing the details of the theory proposed in this paper, I think that some comments can be useful since I worked in research in theoretical physics for a good part of my life.

It is true that the Bell’s inequalities and the EPR paradox have been and are the cause of many debates in fundamental theoretical physics, beginning with Einstein’s reject of these concepts. I believe that today there is enough experimental evidence that on this point Einstein was wrong and the Bell’s inequalities are violated. In other words, I believe that Quantum Mechanics is a valid description of elementary physics at the Quantum scale. We know very well that (non-relativistic) Quantum Mechanics does not work eg. at very high energy scales like the ones probed by the CERN experiments which led recently to the discover of the Higgs particle.

We know very well that there is a lot that we do not understand yet in Particle Physics. This could mean that Quantum Computing could be harder than what we expect due to our ignorance of some new (quantum) physics.

But I disagree with Ross Anderson this time since I do not believe that Classical Mechanics can explain this kind of phenomena nor that it can show that the theory of Quantum Cryptography is flawed (implementing Quantum Cryptography in practice is a completely different story).

My 2c.