Quantum technology fundamentally blocks hacking and docking | Research Highlights | News & Resources : 한국표준과학연구원 영문

Quantum technology fundamentally blocks hacking and docking

- Quantum teleportation for secret sharing creates new paradigm in quantum technology -

# The internet enables instantaneous exchange of digital information, but exposes users to hacking and other forms of information leakage. Scientists are utilizing quantum technology to develop communication networks that are free of information leakage and support transfer of information regardless of distance. Quantum networks are seen as the future of the internet.

A local research team succeeded in developing a quantum information technique that fundamentally prevents information leakage caused by hacking or docking.

▲ Concept map of quantum teleportation for secret sharing (Provided by Prof. Seung-woo Lee of Korea Institute for Advanced Study)

The joint research team comprised of the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President Hyun-Min Park), Korea Institute for Advanced Study (President Jaigyoung Choe), and Seoul National University (President Se-Jung Oh) developed a teleportation** technique that enables multiple users to deliver quantum information* without leakage.

 ? The proposed technique offers higher success rate and security than the previous quantum teleportation protocol for secret sharing, devised and experimentally verified for the first time by the same team, and is expected to accelerate the commercialization of quantum information technology.

  * Quantum information: Information stored in basic quantum particles such as atoms and photons. Can be a superposition of 0 and 1. Offers high security, and allows mass processing.

  ** Teleportation: Transfer of information stored in a quantum system to another quantum system without loss.

Members connected via a quantum network can share secret information that is impossible to leak. Shared secret information refers to information that cannot be deciphered by a single receiver unless corroborated by all other receivers.

Secret information sharing over a quantum network is realized through quantum teleportation*. Information shared within a group is secure, but information security is not guaranteed in the process of sending information to other members. Another problem is that quantum teleportation cannot be applied if multiple senders are involved.

 ? For example, when sending secret information shared by two out of five members to the remaining three members, transmission efficiency deteriorates, and there is a risk of information leakage by some recipients.

  * Quantum teleportation: A key technique of quantum communications and quantum computing that transfers the state of a quantum system over long distances without the transfer of physical objects themselves.

▲ The team of KRISS Quantum Technology Institute is conducting an experiment in quantum teleportation for secret sharing.

Hee Su Park and Sangmin Lee of the KRISS Quantum Technology Institute, Seung-Woo Lee of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study, and Hyunseok Jeong of Seoul National University developed the multiple-party quantum teleportation protocol based on theoretical and experimental investigations. Through a quantum network in which four photons are entangled, quantum information shared by two senders is teleported to photons of two other recipients.

Quantum teleportation for secret sharing was enabled through the development of quantum optics systems that create and measure photons, and Bell-state analyzers* miniaturized and modularized with fiber optics. The new patented quantum techniques were used to improve the rate of success of teleportation in the team’s experiment.

  * Bell-state analyzer: A device that distinguishes the type of quantum dynamic interaction, that is, quantum entanglement.

Hee Su Park, Director of the Quantum Technology Institute, and Seung-Woo Lee, professor at Korea Institute for Advanced Study, said, “By proposing the world’s first method of distributing secret information for quantum teleportation, we have opened new doors to the development of multilateral quantum cryptography and distributed quantum computers. We expect our findings to set new directions for researchers around the world.”

Supported by KRISS, the National Research Council of Science and Technology, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Korea Institute for Advanced Study, the study was published in the renowned Physical Review Letters (IF: 9.227).