Considering the press generated this past year by cyber attacks on both corporate and Department of Defense infrastructure, encryption methods are in dire need of an upgrade. The policy wonkisphere has been brooding over this subject for some time now, as evidenced by former White House Terrorism adviser Richard Clark’s new (and controversial) book Cyberwar released earlier this month. Between the alleged China backed theft of Google’s password source code, to the decimation of Georgia’s digital infrastructure by Russia during their brief skirmish during the Beijing Olympics, robust quantum networks are tech who’s time is long overdue.
Despite the dire need for quantum computing and quantum information transfer, it is a technology plagued with major technical barriers. One of the most formidable challenges is how to keep quantum environments from breaking down amidst all of the ‘noise’ that can easily disrupt quantum information processing. Fortunately two teams have recently published results that provide exciting possibilities for both quantum networks and quantum computing.
Companies like D-Wave and other denizens of DARPA / NSA backing have been working on functional quantum computers for some time now. Rice University recently published news regarding discovery of a new quantum material that has potential fault tolerant quantum computing. For you fellow condensed matter physics geeks, they have named the ultracold trapped atoms as ’5/2 Quantum Hall Liquids’ that would theoretically help solve stability problems related to quantum information processing. This could provide a pathway into creating a more stable and efficient quantum computer, and should have the rapt attention of eyes and ears across Spooksville and your friendly local physics faculty.
Great news, but what if you want to securely transfer all of that data on a quantum encrypted network?
Well, Toshiba Labs in Cambridge announced a bandwidth breakthrough this past week where they successfully demonstrated functional quantum key distribution (QKD) with bit rate that clocked over 1Mbit/s on 50km of fiber. Toshiba managed to benchmark a stable 24-hour averaged period at a rate 100 to 1,000 times faster than previous attempts at the same distance, although the majority of connections only lasted minutes or even seconds. Three cheers for bandwidth, even if stability is a remaining issue to be solved.
Certainly an exciting field of research and one that can’t seem to move fast enough. Its exciting to see this research progressing forward. The endorphin stimulus related to just thinking about how well we are manipulating the laws of the universe these days is certainly a most welcome buzz.
