Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.

The organizing committee includes Malcolm Boshier (P-21), Lukasz Cincio (T-4), Diego Dalvit (T-4), Michael Di Rosa (C-PCS), Changhyun Ryu (P-21) , Nikolai Sinitsyn (T-4), Rolando Somma (T-4), Yigit Subasi (T-4), Christopher Ticknor (T-1), and Wojciech Zurek (T-4).

For more information, or to nominate a speaker, contact Yigit Subasi.

To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Kacy Hopwood.

Thursday November 17, 2016
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Patrick Coles (University of Waterloo)

Technical Host: Rolando Somma

TOPIC: Automated security analysis of quantum cryptography

Abstract
Quantum key distribution (QKD) will be an important part of quantum-safe cryptography - cryptography resistant against quantum computers. As China recently launched a satellite to perform QKD, the prospect of global-scale QKD networks is on the horizon. However, there remains a serious issue that some highly practical QKD protocols are difficult to analyze theoretically. Furthermore, there exists no general theoretical method for studying the effects of device imperfections on the secret key rate. Here, we address these issues by developing a robust, user-friendly software for QKD security analysis, which is now publicly available at our group website. Our software uses tricks from optimization theory (See [1]) in order to rapidly calculate the key rate, for any discrete-variable QKD protocol. In the future we hope to use our software to solve outstanding problems in QKD theory and to explore novel protocol ideas.

[1] P. Coles, E. Metodiev, N. Lütkenhaus. "Numerical approach for unstructured quantum key distribution" Nature Communications. 7: 11712 (2016).