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Quantum Cryptography at
Northwestern University
New optical and quantum techniques have been invented for the usual cryptographic objectives of encryption, key distribution, and authentication that can be implemented with currently available optical technology. The major novelties include the utilization of unavoidable quantum noise in coherent states and the
explicit use of shared secret key for key expansion. In contrast to the other known quantum techniques, our new methods have high efficiency (rate) and can be
integrated in-band with optical networks that involve amplifiers, routers, and substantial path loss. The techniques are provably secure, unconditionally or
quantum computationally, in basic models and should allow extension to realistic networks because of the novel features indicated above. It is a main goal of the
program to develop such security proofs, to investigate the efficiency/security tradeoff for reconfigurable optical networks, and to initiate the development of
network protocols for deploying the new cryptographic techniques into the regular Internet.
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