CAREER: Hybrid Approaches to Quantum Cryptography: New Methods and Protocols

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Quantum cryptography promises a future communication infrastructure that is secure against threats posed not only by today's technology, but also against threats posed by future technological breakthroughs, including the development and deployment of large-scale quantum computers. Despite this great potential, however, there are several practical and theoretical hurdles that must be overcome before this technology can see wide-scale adoption. Towards overcoming these challenges, this project has four primary high-level goals: (1) to reduce the complexity of current quantum cryptographic systems (especially for the end-user, which can translate to potential cost effective implementations); (2) to increase the efficiency and noise tolerance of quantum communication protocols; (3) to broaden the range of cryptographic applications for which quantum resources may be used; and (4) to increase understanding of the foundations of quantum secure communication. This project also has an extensive educational component, providing new opportunities for undergraduate students to become involved in quantum cryptographic research, while also developing new educational material to instruct early undergraduates, and the general public, in the theory and use of quantum communication and cryptography. Such knowledge will be vital to the future workforce, and to future researchers.This project's ultimate goal is to advance the understanding of the theoretical foundations of quantum cryptography, while also advancing capabilities within this field. Through the use of a hybrid classical and quantum approach, the PI will develop a novel security analysis framework based on a new class of entropic uncertainty relation, relying on both classical and quantum methods. Such a framework will be immediately applicable to various "weakly-quantum" protocols which have device restrictions placed on users; it will also be broadly applicable to general quantum cryptography and quantum information theory research. The PI will also harness the power of classical and quantum communication to develop new adaptive countermeasures to improve the security and performance of current quantum cryptographic protocols. Finally, new quantum cryptographic primitives beyond key distribution will be developed, broadening the range of applications that quantum resources may be applied towards.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.