Quantum Tech

Canadian and US researchers have taken an important step towards enabling quantum networks to be cost-effective and truly secure from attack. The experiments, by the team from the University of Calgary, the California Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Colorado, prove the viability of a measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (QKD) system, based on readily available hardware.

  Researchers have now succeeded in formulating a mathematical result that provides an exact answer to the question of how chaos actually behaves. The researchers have analysed chaotic states at the atomic level.

For the first time, researchers have sent a quantum-secured message containing more than one bit of information per photon through the air above a city. The demonstration showed that it could one day be practical to use high-capacity, free-space quantum communication to create a highly secure link between ground-based networks and satellites, a requirement for creating a global quantum encryption network.

Classical thermodynamics was born in the first half of the nineteenth century as a response to the industrial revolution’s need for optimised machines, engines and motors. It focused on calculating such quantities as useful work, dissipated energy and efficiency. According to the second law of thermodynamics, mechanical energy can be completely converted into thermal energy but thermal energy cannot be completely converted into mechanical e...

Los Alamos National Laboratory has produced the first known material capable of single-photon emission at room temperature and at telecommunications wavelengths. These carbon nanotube quantum light emitters may be important for optically-based quantum information processing and information security, while also being of significant interest for ultrasensitive sensing, metrology and imaging needs and as photon sources for fundamental advances in qu...

  Science and the IT industry have high hopes for quantum computing, but descriptions of possible applications tend to be vague. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now come up with a concrete example that demonstrates what quantum computers will actually be able to achieve in the future.

An international team of researchers has now succeeded in extracting a fault tolerant manipulation of quanta from an effect of classical mechanics. The motion of a tennis racket in the air can help predict the behaviour of quanta. “Using an analogy from classical physics aids us in more efficiently designing and illustrating control elements for phenomena in the quantum world,” reports Stefan Glaser, professor in the Department o...

In a new study, researchers demonstrate ground-based measurements of quantum states sent by a laser aboard a satellite 38,000 kilometers above Earth. This is the first time that quantum states have been measured so carefully from so far away. "We were quite surprised by how well the quantum states survived traveling through the atmospheric turbulence to a ground station," said Christoph Marquardt from the Max Planck Institute for the Science...

Due to their computing power, quantum computers have the disruptive potential to break various currently used encryption algorithms. Infineon Technologies is ready to provide a smooth transition from today’s security protocols to next-generation post-quantum cryptography (PQC). The company has now successfully demonstrated the first PQC implementation on a commercially available contactless security chip, as used for electronic ID documents...

Quantum encryption using single photons is a promising technique for boosting the security of communication systems and data networks, but there are challenges in applying the method over large distances due to transmission losses. Using conventional optical amplification doesn't help as this disrupts the quantum link between sender and receiver, but physicists in Europe have found a solution – heralded photon amplification – and put ...