The Schedule

Coffee 9:00 - 9:15

at the ITS 5209 Initiatives for Theoretical Science

[Informal Blackboard Discussions on Quantum Sciences and Technologies]

[by the speakers and participants]

Lunch Break 11:30 - 1:30 at the Bryant Park Grill

Afternoon Session at the Science Center CUNY Graduate Center 4th Floor

[The UK Quantum Communications Hub]

[Timothy Spiller]

I'll give a brief introduction to the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme, which started in 2014 and currently runs until 2024. Then I'll present on the Quantum Communications Hub, which is a multi-university, industry and national laboratory collaboration. Our current R&D portfolio embraces quantum communications at all distance scales, including both free space and fibre networking. I'll close with our perspective on future "quantum-safe" communications and next steps towards a quantum internet.

[Quantum Merkle Trees and applications of quantum PCP]

[Ramis Movassagh]

Commitment scheme is a central task in cryptography, where a party (typically called a prover) stores a piece of information (e.g., a bit string) with the promise of not changing it. This information can be accessed by another party (typically called the verifier), who can later learn the information and verify that it was not meddled with. Merkle tree is a well-known construction for doing so in a succinct manner, in which the verifier can learn any part of the information by receiving a short proof from the honest prover. Despite its significance in classical cryptography, there was no quantum analog of the Merkle tree. In this work, we propose the quantum Merkle tree. It is based on what we call the Quantum Haar Random Oracle Model (QHROM). In QHROM, both the prover and the verifier have access to a Haar random quantum oracle G and its inverse. Using the quantum Merkle tree, we propose a succinct quantum argument for the Gap-k-Local-Hamiltonian problem. We prove it is secure against semi-honest provers in QHROM and conjecture its general security. We then obtain a constant-round zero-knowledge proof system for constant-gap $k$-$\LH$ with completeness $1 - n^{-\omega(1)}$ and soundness $s$, for some constant $s \in (0,1)$. Assuming the Quantum PCP conjecture is true, this succinct argument and the zero-knowledge proof extend to all of QMA . This work raises a number of interesting open research problems. joint work with Lijie Chen.

Networking and Discussions 3:05 - 3:15

[Fast Quantum Algorithm for Solving Multivariate Quadratic Equations.]

[Ludovic Perret]

In August 2015 the cryptographic world was shaken by a sudden and surprising announcement by the US National Security Agency (NSA) concerning plans to transition to post-quantum algorithms. Since this announcement post-quantum cryptography has become a topic of primary interest for several standardization bodies. The transition from the currently deployed public-key algorithms to post-quantum algorithms has been found to be challenging in many aspects. In particular the problem of evaluating the quantum-bit security of such post-quantum cryptosystems remains vastly open. Of course this question is of primarily concern in the process of standardizing the post-quantum cryptosystems. In this paper we consider the quantum security of the problem of solving a system of mm Boolean multivariate quadratic equations inn variables (MQ2); a central problem in post-quantum cryptography. When n=mn=m, under a natural algebraic assumption, we present a Las-Vegas quantum algorithm solving MQ2 that requires the evaluation of, on average, O(20.462n)O(20.462n) quantum gates. Joint work with Jean-Charles Faugère, Kelsey Horan, Delaram Kahrobaei, Marc Kaplan, Elham Kashefi, Ludovic Perret.

[Performance of Post-Quantum Cryptography SIKE in Various Platforms]

[Reza Azarderakhsh]

In this talk, I will review the quantum-safe supersingular isogeny key encapsulation (SIKE) mechanism from technical aspects and provide the practical implementation results in various devices such as FPGAs as well as embedded MCUs. I will also discuss efforts towards the side-channel resistance and integration into real-world applications. Open research problems will be also introduced for further discussion and collaborations.

Networking and Discussions 4:40 - 4:50

[Towards the Quantum Internet: Building an entanglement-sharing quantum network in New York.]

[Eden Figueroa]

The goal of quantum communication is to transmit quantum states between distant sites. The key aspect to achieve this goal is the generation of entangled states over long distances. Such states can then be used to faithfully transfer classical and quantum states via quantum teleportation. This is an exciting new direction which establishes the fundamentals of a new quantum internet. The big challenge, however, is that the entanglement rates generated between two distant sites decrease exponentially with the length of the connecting channel. To overcome this difficulty, the new concepts of entanglement swapping, and quantum repeater operation are needed. In this talk we will show our progress towards building a quantum network of many quantum devices capable of distributing entanglement over long distances connecting Stony Brook University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. We will show how to produce photonic quantum entanglement in the laboratory and how to store it and distribute it by optically manipulating the properties of atomic clouds. Finally, we will discuss our recent experiments in which several quantum devices are already interconnected forming elementary quantum cryptographic and quantum repeater networks.

[Panel Discussions on Future of Quantum Sciences and Technologies and the impact of cybersecurity]

[V. Shpilrain, T. Spiller, L. Perret, R. Movassagh, R. Azarderakhsh, E. Figueroa, A. Alú, D. Kahrobaei]

Reception by invitation only