cryptography
Key Laboratory of Quantum Information (CAS), University of Science and Technology of China has recently demonstrated a metropolitan Quantum Cryptography Network (QCN) for Government Administration in Wuhu, China.
In what may prove to be a major development for scientists in fields ranging from forensics to quantum communications, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new, highly sensitive, low-cost technique for measuring light in the near-infrared range.
Researchers from across Europe have united to build the largest quantum key distribution network ever built. The efforts of 41 research and industrial organisations were realised as secure, quantum encrypted information was sent over an eight node, mesh network.
A team of physicists and engineers have demonstrated all-fibre quantum logic, where single photons are generated and used to perform the contolled-NOT quantum logic gate in optical fibres with high fidelity.
The only quantum technology in practical use today is quantum cryptography and is currently limited in the distance over which secure communication may occur.
Rapidly rising cyber crime and the growing prospect of the Internet being used as a medium for terrorist attacks pose a major challenge for IT security. Cryptography is central to this challenge, since it underpins privacy, confidentiality, and identity, which together provide the fabric for e-commerce and secure communications.
Quantum cryptography, a completely secure means of communication, is much closer to being used practically as researchers from Toshiba and Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory have now developed high speed detectors capable of receiving information with much higher key rates, thereby able to receive more information faster.
Physicists have built a critical component for the development of quantum computers and spintronic devices, potentially bringing advances in cryptography and high-speed database searches a step closer. A team of researchers has created a device that can effectively split a stream of quantum objects such as electrons into two streams according to the spin of each, herding those with ''up'' spin in one direction and corralling those that spin ''down'' in another. By producing such ''spin-polarized'' streams, the tiny device could become a key component in quantum computers, which have not yet left the drawing boards of the computer industry but are highly sought-after for their purported facility at cracking codes and searching large databases.
Researchers have demonstrated a new high-speed quantum cryptography method that uses the properties of light to encrypt information into a form of code that can only be cracked by violating the physical laws of nature. The method promises security even against information security's greatest foe: the not-yet-invented but still-feared powerful quantum computer, which could break almost any conventional code. The researchers transmitted encrypted data at the rate of 250 megabits per second. Because it uses standard lasers, detectors and other existing optical technology to transmit large bundles of photons, the protocol is more than 1,000 times faster than its main competitor, a technique based on single photons that is difficult and expensive to implement, the researchers say.
