Quantum Cryptography

During   the 20th  century and a  half, the contest between codemakers  and    code   breakers   has   undergone   reversals    and complications.   An  unbreakable cipher  was   invented in   1918, although its unbreakability was not proved until the 1940s. This cipher was rather impractical because it required the sender and receiver to agree beforehand on a key – a large stockpile of secret random    digits, some  of  which were used up each time a secret message   was   transmitted.   More   practical ciphers with short, reusable keys, or no secret key at all, were developed in the 1970s, but to this day they remain in a mathematical limbo, having neither been broken nor proved secure. A recent unexpected development is the    use of quantum  mechanics to perform cryptographic feats unachievable by mathematics alone. Quantum cryptographic devices typically employ individual photons of light and take advantage of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, according to which measuring a quantum system in general disturbs it and yields incomplete information about its state before the measurement. Eavesdropping on a quantum communications channel therefore causes an unavoidable disturbance, alerting the legitimate users. Quantum cryptography exploits this effect to allow two parties who have never met and who share no secret information beforehand to communicate in absolute secrecy under the nose of an adversary.

Introduction to Quantum Computer?

Behold your computer.  Your computer represents the culmination of years of technological advancements beginning with the early ideas of Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and eventual creation of the first computer by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1941.  Surprisingly however, the high speed modern computer sitting in front of you is fundamentally no different from its gargantuan 30 ton ancestors, which were equipped with some 18000 vacuum tubes and 500 miles of wiring!  Although computers have become more compact and considerably faster in performing their task, the task remains the same: to manipulate and interpret an encoding of binary bits into a useful computational result.  A bit is a fundamental unit of information, classically represented as a 0 or 1 in your digital computer.  Each classical bit is physically realized through a macroscopic physical system, such as the magnetization on a hard disk or the charge on a capacitor.  A document, for example, comprised of n-characters stored on the hard drive of a typical computer is accordingly described by a string of 8n zeros and ones.  Herein lies a key difference between your classical computer and a quantum computer.  Where a classical computer obeys the well understood laws of classical physics, a quantum computer is a device that harnesses physical phenomenon unique to quantum mechanics (especially quantum interference) to realize a fundamentally new mode of information processing.

In a quantum computer, the fundamental unit of information (called a quantum bit or qubit), is not binary but rather more quaternary in nature.  This qubit property arises as a direct consequence of its adherence to the laws of quantum mechanics which differ radically from the laws of classical physics.  A qubit can exist not only in a state corresponding to the logical state 0 or 1 as in a classical bit, but also in states corresponding to a blend or superposition of these classical states.  In other words, a qubit can exist as a zero, a one, or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, with a numerical coefficient representing the probability for each state.  This may seem counterintuitive because everyday phenomenon are governed by classical physics, not quantum mechanics — which takes over at the atomic level.  This rather difficult concept is perhaps best explained through an experiment.

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