The Quantum Enigma

W. CAMPBELL SMITH

Wolfgang Smith

Seth Lloyd

Enigma machines are devices that perform cryptography using pseudo-random numbers. The original enigma machine code was broken by detecting hidden patterns in these pseudo-random numbers. This paper proposes a model for a quantum optical enigma machine and shows that the phenomenon of quantum data locking makes such quantum enigma machines provably secure even in the presence of noise and loss.

Barry R. Clarke

Jacob Aron

Alan Turing and an army of codebreakers took years to crack the Enigma code during the second world war. Just be thankful the Nazis weren't using a quantum Enigma machine. Quantum key distribution can already keep secret the key to a code. Enigma machines are like souped-up typewriters, with an illuminated panel above the keyboard that also displays the alphabet. Type in a letter and a different letter on the panel lights up, indicating how to encrypt that character. Wired rotors do the scrambling by guiding an electrical signal along a certain path.

Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner

Abstract Consciousness and the quantum enigma are not just two mysteries; they are the two mysteries: the first, the physical demonstration of the quantum enigma, faces us with a fundamental mystery of the objective world “out there;” the second, conscious awareness, faces us with the fundamental mystery of the subjective, mental world “in here.” Quantum mechanics appears to connect the two.