FET: Small: Theoretical and Algorithmic Foundations of Covert Quantum-Secured Networks

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With the widespread of communication networks, protecting the ever growing amount of sensitive information transiting through these channels has become a daunting challenge; in an ever more complex and competitive interconnected world, the mere act of creating and communicating sensitive information may become a liability. This project will help address this security challenge by developing systems that exploit quantum properties (such as those of photons encountered in optical systems) to ensure that communications can remain secret (in the sense that the information content is protected) and covert (in the sense that the presence of communication cannot be detected). The project will develop theoretical models in quantum information theory and algorithms that offer provable guarantees for secrecy and covertness. In addition to investigating quantum information-theoretic aspects of secure covert communications, the research team will mentor students engaged in this research, develop a graduate level course on quantum information theory, and engage in collaborative efforts to experimentally test and demonstrate the proposed models and algorithms.The project will design and analyze protocols for communication over quantum channels between legitimate parties, in such a way that the parties can provably assert if their communication has been detected and generate secret keys with provably low-probability of detection. Supported by preliminary results, this project will explore how to encode information onto sequences of quantum states and how to decode the sequences after transmission through a noisy channel, in such a way that adversaries that are limited only by the laws of quantum physics can neither detect nor extract information. The main challenge addressed is how to reconcile the need for using an extremely diffuse information content to escape detection while still being able to process the information at a receiver. The performance of the proposed secret and covert key generation protocols will be compared to that of established quantum key distributions protocols through the development of a precise quantum information-theoretic framework in which to study the possibility of covert and secret key generation over quantum channels; the design of low-complexity algorithms allowing one to process the diffuse statistical information content of covert signals; and the experimental validation of theoretical models and algorithm in an optical testbed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.