00:09Hi, my name is Samantha Davis. I am a postdoc who's based at Caltech and I've been working on building
00:17quantum networks towards the quantum internet and their intersections with questions in fundamental physics.
00:25So, your seminar today at CERN had some keywords like teleportation, wormholes, entanglement that evoke, at least in the layperson,
00:36science fiction or in any case, very abstract concepts.
00:39But in your case, they are closely linked to the quantum revolution that is happening right now and that is
00:45opening so much incredible prospects for the future.
00:48Can you explain this link between theory and the application to quantum technologies?
00:53From the past several decades, we've been starting to see entanglement transition from being a physics experiment to something that
01:02we can actually control and generate and distribute at large scales.
01:08This ability to engineer entanglement is now realizing these real world technologies.
01:14At the same time, entanglement is playing a central role in modern threads of fundamental physics, specifically in context of
01:25Bell test, holography and quantum gravity.
01:29What we're starting to be able to see is we can start to do experiments and tests of fundamental physics
01:37based off of entanglement that allow us to use this as a probe for answering questions in fundamental physics.
01:43Entanglement is a fundamental resource for many different quantum technologies.
01:48And the ability to distribute entanglement over long distances is a primitive for many quantum applications.
01:56And so with this, we expect that we can use entanglement to enhance the more secure communications between multiple parties,
02:05as well as the potential for enhancing distributed sensing and computations.
02:12What is the best development that you that you that you have in mind for the quantum Internet?
02:17How far are we from the quantum Internet?
02:20There's been a lot of rapid progress occurring over the past several decades.
02:24We've seen quantum networks evolve from being just experiments like in the lab to then actual deployments in cities where
02:35you're currently starting to see actual quantum key distribution networks being used to encrypt sensitive information, such as medical information
02:44and bank information.
02:45At the same time, there's also been massive efforts to scale up these networks across entire countries and using satellite
02:55links with a notable demonstration being space to ground teleportation back in 2017.
03:02So the future is bright for quantum networking and at this point requires a lot of investment and infrastructure development
03:12from many different types of stateholders.
03:14What is the main advantage of a quantum Internet compared to the Internet we have today?
03:19The primary advantage for a quantum Internet that I foresee is the ability to encrypt information and more secure, for
03:30example, using quantum key distribution, as well as being able to synchronize and enhance the precision of quantum sensing technologies,
03:40of sensing capabilities.
03:41And ultimately, once we have quantum computers, we have the potential to realize distributed simulations and computational resources that could
03:53far surpass what we can achieve today with our classical Internet.
03:58What is your view of cybersecurity today?
04:02What are the risks today while the quantum Internet is going to be developed before that nowadays? Are we at
04:09risk with cybersecurity?
04:11Currently, our security today is based off of RSA encryption, where we rely on being able to encode information using
04:23very, very large co-prime numbers that are very hard to factorize.
04:27And we're relying today on the limitations of our current computational power in being able to crack these very, very
04:35large, large numbers.
04:36The advent of quantum computers with Shor's algorithm, we can efficiently start to decrypt our current means or these large
04:45numbers like our current RSA encryption.
04:48This potential threat of computers of as we increase our computational power using these quantum computing techniques, we can also
04:56use quantum information processing or techniques to be able to information theoretically guarantee security based off of the rules of
05:07quantum mechanics.
05:07So, by using quantum encryption, for example, using teleportation or quantum key distribution techniques, this would allow us in theory
05:20to realize means of encryption that are theoretically impossible to hack.
05:27Having a quantum Internet could enable the most secure means of encrypting information that are robust to even attacks by
05:36quantum computers in addition to all of the attacks that we are facing today.
05:42And this is because we are developing this encryption based off of the fundamental rules of quantum mechanics.
05:48What are the main challenges for you as a scientist to reach this goal?
05:53The main challenges to reach this goal is primarily trying to transition things that we've been able to do in
06:03a controlled laboratory setting to something that can actually be deployed and used in the real world at scale.
06:10In addition to understanding the effects of realistic real world like imperfections in these uncontrolled environments, what we need to
06:21see is continued investment and focus on developing scalable and robust and also cost effective tools that we can use
06:35in the actual real world.
06:37And at the same time, have a better understanding of the effects of the performance of these technologies when we
06:46are in these environments, when we're in operating with users in the real world.
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