In this presentation, an overview of Quantum Information Systems is given. Therefore, the postulates of quantum mechanics are given based on one interpretation that is called the Copenhagen interpretation. The main pillars of quantum mechanics are: Superposition, Interference, and Entanglement. Quantum Information Systems comprise three disciplines: Quantum Computation, Quantum Communication, and Quantum Control. Each one of them has a number of topics with some implementations that have reached the commercial level. Quantum Computation has three models: the circuit model that is using different techniques like superconducting elements and special Silicon-based elements. The Adiabatic quantum model has reached the commercial stage through a start-up company using superconducting chips. The categorical quantum model is based on category theory and one of its main applications is the study and verification of network and cryptographic protocols. Quantum communication started with defining the basic unit of information, the qubit. Then the quantum compression theorem was proved. The quantum channel capacity problem was divided into two problems: transmitting classical information over a quantum channel, and transmitting quantum information over a quantum channel. The first problem was partially resolved. However, the second problem is being researched upon. Two applications will be briefly presented: quantum teleportation and superdense coding. Both of them employs quantum entanglement. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using cryptographic protocols has received much attention due its importance in network security. A number of protocols have been proposed and some of them have been implemented, and now a number of commercial products have been announced. Also, some experimental networks have been implemented. QKD using space links have been proposed and experimented with. In few years quantum satellites will be launched. Quantum cryptographic protocols are being proposed to protect infrastructure networks like the electric power grid. Also, it is being used as a countermeasure against global spying networks like ECHELON that are detrimental for national economies. The Quantum Internet is also being considered using quantum teleportation together with Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with some experimental work going on. Quantum Control is essential for both Quantum Computation and Quantum Communication. Intensive research is going on in: State estimation (called Quantum State Tomography), system identification (called Quantum Process Tomography), and Quantum Feedback Control. The basic concepts will be briefly considered in this presentation. University education has witnessed major changes to support the above developments. At the postgraduate level many universities offer many courses related to the above disciplines. Recently, a number of institutions started to offer undergraduate courses and some of them have even started to introduce Quantum Engineering 4 years undergraduate programs. A brief account will be given to such developments.
In this presentation, an overview of Quantum Information Systems is given. Therefore, the postulates of quantum mechanics are given based on one interpretation that is called the Copenhagen interpretation. The main pillars of quantum mechanics are: Superposition, Interference, and Entanglement. Quantum Information Systems comprise three disciplines: Quantum Computation, Quantum Communication, and Quantum Control. Each one of them has a number of topics with some implementations that have reached the commercial level. Quantum Computation has three models: the circuit model that is using different techniques like superconducting elements and special Silicon-based elements. The Adiabatic quantum model has reached the commercial stage through a start-up company using superconducting chips. The categorical quantum model is based on category theory and one of its main applications is the study and verification of network and cryptographic protocols. Quantum communication started with defining the basic unit of information, the qubit. Then the quantum compression theorem was proved. The quantum channel capacity problem was divided into two problems: transmitting classical information over a quantum channel, and transmitting quantum information over a quantum channel. The first problem was partially resolved. However, the second problem is being researched upon. Two applications will be briefly presented: quantum teleportation and superdense coding. Both of them employs quantum entanglement. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using cryptographic protocols has received much attention due its importance in network security. A number of protocols have been proposed and some of them have been implemented, and now a number of commercial products have been announced. Also, some experimental networks have been implemented. QKD using space links have been proposed and experimented with. In few years quantum satellites will be launched. Quantum cryptographic protocols are being proposed to protect infrastructure networks like the electric power grid. Also, it is being used as a countermeasure against global spying networks like ECHELON that are detrimental for national economies. The Quantum Internet is also being considered using quantum teleportation together with Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with some experimental work going on. Quantum Control is essential for both Quantum Computation and Quantum Communication. Intensive research is going on in: State estimation (called Quantum State Tomography), system identification (called Quantum Process Tomography), and Quantum Feedback Control. The basic concepts will be briefly considered in this presentation. University education has witnessed major changes to support the above developments. At the postgraduate level many universities offer many courses related to the above disciplines. Recently, a number of institutions started to offer undergraduate courses and some of them have even started to introduce Quantum Engineering 4 years undergraduate programs. A brief account will be given to such developments.
In this presentation, an overview of Quantum Information Systems is given. Therefore, the postulates of quantum mechanic are given based on one interpretation that is called the Copenhagen interpretation. The main pillars of quantum mechanics are: Superposition, Interference, and Entanglement. Quantum Information Systems comprise three disciplines: Quantum Computation, Quantum Communication, and Quantum Control. Each one of them has a number of topics with some implementations that have reached the commercial level. Quantum Computation has three models: the circuit model that is using different techniques like superconducting elements and special Silicon-based elements. The Adiabatic quantum model has reached the commercial stage through a startup company using superconducting chips. The categorical quantum model is based on category theory and one of its main applications is the study and verification of network and cryptographic protocols. Quantum communication started with defining the basic unit of information, the qubit. Then the quantum compression theorem was proved. The quantum channel capacity problem was divided into two problems: transmitting classical information over a quantum channel, and transmitting quantum information over a quantum channel. The first problem was partially resolved. However, the second problem is being researched upon. Two applications will be briefly presented: quantum teleportation and superdense coding. Both of them employs quantum entanglement. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using cryptographic protocols has received much attention due to its importance in network security. A number of protocols have been proposed and some of them have been implemented, and now a number of commercial products have been announced. Also, some experimental networks have been implemented. QKD using space links have been proposed and experimented with. In few years quantum satellites will be launched. Quantum cryptographic protocols are being proposed to protect infrastructure networks like the electric power grid. Also, it is being used as a countermeasure against global spying networks like ECHELON that are detrimental for national economies. The Quantum Internet is also being considered using quantum teleportation together with Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with some experimental work going on. Quantum Control is essential for both Quantum Computation and Quantum Communication. Intensive research is going on in: State estimation (called Quantum State Tomography), and system identification (called Process State Tomography), and Quantum Feedback Control. The basic concepts will be briefly considered in this presentation. University education has witnessed major changes to support the above developments. At the postgraduate level many universities offer many courses related to the above disciplines. Recently, a number of institutions started to offer undergraduate courses and some of them have even started to introduce Quantum Engineering 4 year undergraduate programs. A brief account will be given to such developments.
Quantum Information Science is a cross-disciplinary subject that has arisen in the last twenty years. It concerns itself with the consequences of our most complete description of the physical world (that is, quantum mechanics) for the reliable, secure, private, and rapid processing of information, both in communication and computation. While its invention is often ascribed to the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in the 1980s, his contributions were only one of many that initiated the field around that time. While he perceived that new types of physical devices, in which the quantum laws of superposition and entanglement function at the logical level, could give new power in the simulation of quantum physics, it was others (Bennett, Brassard) who showed that the uncertainty principle led to fundamentally more secure ways of communicating secret messages. It was yet others (Deutsch, Vazirani) who understood that quantum theory defined a new kind of Turing machine, and that not only quantum physics simulations, but potentially many other computational problems, are sped up in this machine. And it was yet another (Shor) who found a simple, very fast algorithm for prime factorization. The word "qubit" was coined only in 1995. Its introduction is indicative of a new mindset that has developed in recent years for studying and using quantum systems. "Qubit" now stands for a durable paradigm that spans a very wide variety of fields. It thus has many sub-meanings: first, it is the basic abstract unit of information for workers ranging from optical communication engineers to NMR spectroscopists to black-hole theorists. Second, it is the name we now routinely give to physical two level systems, as they are realized by photons, atomic and ionic eigenlevels, electronic and nuclear spin, structural defects in solids, and circulating-current states of superconducting devices. Physics has long dealt with some of these two-level systems, but calling them qubits implies a whole suite of interrelated ideas and capabilities that we ascribe to these systems: the ability to precisely set, and to precisely measure, the quantum state of one unique specimen, to avoid its coupling with the environment while at the same time strongly and controllably coupling the qubits together, to exploit the resulting quantum entanglement as a resource for metrological, cryptographic, and computational tasks. Quantum Information is a very diverse subject pursued today in many different directions, by many hundreds of researchers internationally: In theoretical physics, it has enlivened and sharpened the understanding of efficient representations of entangled many-particle wavefunctions, and has provided the prospect of applications for new concepts such as anyons and majorana fermions. Information theorists has benefitted from having a rigorous extension of the basis of their field, in which classical information theory is subsumed into a greatly broader subject. Theoretical computer scientists continue the search for new quantum algorithms, and have used quantum concepts to prove new results about the classification of computational complexity. Coding theorists have had the new and subtle problem of quantum error correction to analyse and conquer. Most strikingly, the program of experimental physics has been influenced in many directions by Quantum Information Science. State-of-the-art optics experiments transmit quantum states over long distances and perform precision manipulations in single quanta (atomic ions, impurity spins, quantum dots) in the quest to have working quantum cyptography and quantum computing. Quantum Hall systems, and topological insulators, are being assiduously examined for new elementary excitations for use as qubits. In the course of ten years, superconducting devices have improved by over four orders of magnitude in their quantum coherence, a metric made precise by the ideas of quantum computing. [...] DiVincenzo, David
Quantum information theory represents a revolutionary paradigm that merges quantum mechanics with information science, fundamentally transforming our understanding of computation, communication, and information processing. This chapter provides a comprehensive examination of quantum information theory, exploring its theoretical foundations, practical applications, and transformative potential across multiple domains. We investigate the core principles including quantum bits (qubits), superposition, entanglement, and quantum interference, while analyzing their implications for quantum computing, cryptography, and communication protocols. Through systematic literature review and methodological analysis, we present current research trends, breakthrough developments, and emerging applications. The chapter addresses significant challenges including decoherence, error correction, and scalability issues that currently limit practical implementation. Our discussion encompasses quantum algorithms, quantum error correction codes, and the evolving landscape of quantum technologies. We conclude by identifying future research directions and the potential societal impact of quantum information systems, emphasizing both the unprecedented opportunities and the technical obstacles that define this rapidly advancing field.
One of the most fascinating recent developments in research has been how different disciplines have become more and more interconnected. So much so that fields as disparate as information theory and fundamental physics have combined to produce ideas for the next generation of computing and secure information technologies, both of which have far reaching consequences. For more than fifty years Moore's law, which describes the trend of the transistor's size shrinking by half every two years, has proven to be uncannily accurate. However, the computing industry is now approaching a fundamental barrier as the size of a transistor approaches that of an individual atom and the laws of physics and quantum mechanics take over. Rather then look at this as the end, quantum information science has emerged to ask the question of what additional power and functionality might be realized by harnessing some of these quantum effects. This thesis presents work on the sub-field of quantum cryptography which seeks to use quantum means in order to assure the security of ones communications. The beauty of quantum cryptographic methods are that they can be proven secure, now and indefinitely into the future, relying solely on the validity of the laws of physics for their proofs of security. This is something which is impossible for nearly all current classical cryptographic methods to claim. \n \nThe thesis begins by examining the first implementation of an entangled quantum key distribution system over two free-space optical links. This system represents the first test-bed of its kind in the world and while its practical importance in terrestrial applications is limited to a smaller university or corporate campus, the system mimics the setup for an entangled satellite system aiding in the study of distributing entangled photons from an orbiting satellite to two earthbound receivers. Having completed the construction of a second free-space link and the automation of the alignment system, I securely distribute keys to Alice and Bob in two distant locations separated by 1,575 m with no direct line-of-sight between them. I examine all of the assumptions necessary for my claims of security, something which is particularly important for moving these systems out of the lab and into commercial industry. I then go on to describe the free-space channel over which the photons are sent and the implementation of each of the major system components. I close with a discussion of the experiment which saw raw detected entangled photon rates of 565 s^{-1} and a quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 4.92% resulting in a final secure key rate of 85 bits/s. Over the six hour night time experiment I was able to generate 1,612,239 bits of secure key. \n \nWith a successful QKD experiment completed, this thesis then turns to the problem of improving the technology to make it more practical by increasing the key rate of the system and thus the speed at which it can securely encrypt information. It does so in three different ways, involving each of the major disciplines comprising the system: measurement hardware, source technology, and software post-processing. First, I experimentally investigate a theoretical proposal for biasing the measurement bases in the QKD system showing a 79% improvement in the secret key generated from the same raw key rates. Next, I construct a second generation entangled photon source with rates two orders of magnitude higher than the previous source using the idea of a Sagnac interferometer. More importantly, the new source has a QBER as low as 0.93% which is not only important for the security of the QKD system but will be required for the implementation of a new cryptographic primitive later. Lastly, I study the free-space link transmission statistics and the use of a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) filter to improve the key rate by 25.2% from the same amount of raw key. The link statistics have particular relevance for a current project with the Canadian Space Agency to exchange a quantum key with an orbiting satellite - a project which I have participated in two feasibility studies for. \n \nWanting to study the usefulness of more recent ideas in quantum cryptography this thesis then looks at the first experimental implementation of a new cryptographic primitive called oblivious transfer (OT) in the noisy storage model. This primitive has obvious important applications as it can be used to implement a secure identification scheme provably secure in a quantum scenario. Such a scheme could one day be used, for example, to authenticate a user over short distances, such as at ATM machines, which have proven to be particularly vulnerable to hacking and fraud. Over a four hour experiment, Alice and Bob measure 405,642,088 entangled photon pairs with an average QBER of 0.93% allowing them to create a secure OT key of 8,939,150 bits. As a first implementer, I examine many of the pressing issues currently preventing the scheme from being more widely adopted such as the need to relax the dependance of the OT rate on the loss of the system and the need to extend the security proof to cover a wider range of quantum communication channels and memories. It is important to note that OT is fundamentally different than QKD for security as the information is never physically exchanged over the communication line but rather the joint equality function f(x) = f(y) is evaluated. Thus, security in QKD does not imply security for OT. \n \nFinally, this thesis concludes with the construction and initial alignment of a second generation free-space quantum receiver, useful for increasing the QKD key rates, but designed for a fundamental test of quantum theory namely a Svetlichny inequality violation. Svetlichny's inequality is a generalization of Bell's inequality to three particles where any two of the three particles maybe be non-locally correlated. Even so, a violation of Svetlichny's inequality shows that certain quantum mechanical states are incompatible with this restricted class of non-local yet realistic theories. Svetlichny's inequality is particularly important because while there has been an overwhelming number of Bell experiments performed testing two-body correlations, experiments on many-body systems have been few and far between. Experiments of this type are particularly valuable to explore since we live in a many-body world. The new receiver incorporates an active polarization analyzer capable of switching between measurement bases on a microsecond time-scale through the use of a Pockels cell while maintaining measurements of a high fidelity. Some of the initial alignment and analysis results are detailed including the final measured contrasts of 1:25.2 and 1:22.6 in the rectilinear and diagonal bases respectively.
The development towards fault tolerant quantum computers has accelerated in recent years. It is therefore, reasonable to posit that quantum computers will be able to solve numerical problems previously unsolvable in a reasonable amount of time. This is particularly relevant in the context of factoring large composite numbers and solving the discrete logarithm problem. These two mathematical problems form the foundation for the vast majority of asymmetric encryption systems and key exchange procedures (such as RSA, DH, ECDH, ECDSA, and so forth). It is anticipated that quantum computers with cryptographic capabilities will become available within the next one or two decades. A significant number of high-security applications require the encryption of classified material beyond this timeframe. Consequently, the mitigation of the threats posed by quantum computers to classical encryption schemes has become a race against time, already. Currently two approaches are discussed to ensure quantum secure encryption and communications after the breakthrough of quantum computers. The first approach is called Post-Quantum-Cryptography (PQC). Here, new encryption and signature schemes are implemented based on mathematical problems which are hard to crack classically and by quantum computers. The second approach is based on a secure exchange of encryption keys and is referred to as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). This approach utilizes the quantum mechanical properties of photons in a way that enables the sending and receiving parties to detect any attempts by an eavesdropper to record or alter the transmitted keys. If the successfully transferred keys are used only once for encryption unconditional security can be achieved in theory. Nevertheless, quantum key distribution (QKD) requires either dedicated fiber-optic lines that are solely used for the key exchange, commonly referred to as a dark fiber network or free-space links, which utilize a laser terminal and a telescope as the sender and receiver, respectively. Free-space links can be employed for mobile applications that facilitate quantum-secured communication with minimal deployment times over distances of several kilometers. Moreover, free-space links are utilized to exchange quantum keys between optical ground stations (OGS) and QKD satellites. By leveraging the in-orbit deployment of quantum keys, QKD enables the establishment of secure long- distance connections. DLR (Deutsches Luft- und Raumfahrtzentrum) is part of the Munich Quantum Network (MuQuaNet), which is a research dark fiber network situated in the metropolitan area of Munich. The project is spearheaded by the University of the Bundeswehr (Munich) and is operated in conjunction with a number of other research facilities and governmental institutions. The QKD network is comprised of multi-vendor QKD devices, including both prepare-and-measure and entanglement-based systems. DLR, in particular the German Space Operation Center (GSOC) assumed the task of demonstrating the use case of encrypting the ground segment for satellite operations employing QKD. This presentation will provide an overview of the current status of our work, including a technical explanation of the implementation and a general description of the approach used to encrypt part of our TMTC data streams as part of this QKD experiment.
Nowadays quantum information science is in a state of theoretic completeness; much is invested to research quality physical solution for quantum computer and applications, so the field is led by physicists and information science and technology professionals. This field proved its potential and many (including us) believe it is in the right direction to go. In this paper we'll try to present and analyze the philosophy and nature of quantum information science and discuss hot topics around them. Although there is plenty of space for discussion around this field, we will concentrate on some important issues, such as quantum communication, algorithms and cryptography. Communication promises to be one of the directions where huge breakthroughs will be observed (entanglement as communication), algorithms have already shown exponential advantage (Shor's factoring) over classical counterparts and different paradigm of information processing. Cryptography seems to utilize general achievements in quantum information science and make encryption protocols very secure. Quantum computation can be understood as a generalization of classical computation: The possible states of a quantum computer are superpositions of bit strings, where the tensor factor is called a quantum bit or qubit. To evaluate the computational complexity of an algorithm, either classical or quantum, it is necessary to specify a set of elementary operations, the number of which used during the computation quantities the complexity. If we allow arbitrary permutations classically, or arbitrary unitary transformations quantum mechanically, any state can be reached from any other state in a single step. The general kind of quantum computer should be programmed to perform distinctively quantum operations such as generating two bits in a superposition state. An appropriate measurement on the final superposed state of the computer produces a probabilistic behavior of the output, and because of this quantum parallelization does not reduce the average time required for parallelizable computation completion. The development of quantum computing science and technology as well as quantum computers as thinking machines is very dependent on different achievements of modern research in fundamental and applied physics as well as novel mathematical methods and tools.