18.3.1. "What is quantum cryptography?"
+ Two main flavors:
+ secure channels exploiting the Uncertainty Principle
+ Brassard, Bennett, fiber optic lines, short distances,
detects tapping
+ Quantum cryptography
- bits can be exchanged-albeit at fairly low
efficiencies-over a channel
- with detection of taps, via the change of
polarizations
+ Stephen Wiesner wrote a 1970 paper, half a decade
before the P-K work, which outlined this-not
published until much later
- speculate that the NSA knew about this and
quashed the publication
+ factoring of numbers using a strange Many World
interpretation
- Shor
+ hearkens to my spoof about Russians
- I never knew I hit so close to the mark!
18.3.2. "What about _quantum cryptography_?"
+ Exploiting Uncertainty Principle to make untappable
communication lines. (More precisely, tapped lines give
indication of having been tapped.)
- Bennett and Brassard
- faint flashes of light in a fiber optic cable used;
polarized photons
- Alice and Bob go through a protocol that involves them
picking Linear or Circular Polarization (LP or CP); can't
be simultaneously measured...
-
- Not likely to be important for a long time.
- An additional tool, or crypto primitive building block.
By Tim May, see README
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