How quantum mechanics threatens our digital lives – and makes them safer

Much of the work of Serge Fehr, Professor of Quantum Information Theory, is abstract and theoretical and comprehensible to very few people. But his work helps make the digital world safer, so, for instance, in future our internet banking will still be problem free. He will explain more in his inaugural lecture at Leiden University on 26 September 2022. In addition to his part-time work in Leiden, Fehr has been working as a scientific staff member in the Cryptology group at CWI since 2010.

Quantum physics, or quantum mechanics, is a scientific discipline that looks at the behaviour of the very smallest particles. It is the theory that describes how, among others, atoms, electrons and light behave. It is difficult to explain exactly how quantum physics works. Fehr: "I can give similarities or high-level ideas, but they will always be misleading. Quantum mechanics is like nothing we are familiar with. The only way to really understand it is to understand the mathematics behind it. There is no shortcut."

Fehr is working on quantum information theory, which combines quantum physics and information theory, and its applications to cryptography.  Thanks to cryptographic schemes from this information theory, we can now do secure internet banking, for example, and our medical records are secure. These schemes are very difficult to crack with today’s computers. "But if at some point there’s a working quantum computer, much of the current cryptography will be insecure," says Fehr. "And there’s a huge effort going into developing that computer." In the future quantum computers will be able to make rapid calculations that would take regular computers millions of years, such as factoring large integers in the blink of an eye.

Fehr is therefore working with others to develop and analyse new cryptographic schemes that a quantum computer wouldn’t be able to crack. Fehr: "I’m researching whether the schemes we want to use are as secure as we think they are. And I do that from a very mathematical perspective."

Mathematics

He has loved mathematics since secondary school. What he likes is how maths takes a lot of intuition and imagination but is ultimately really precise. "You have to translate everything into strict mathematical formulas. And there is nothing in between. A mathematical statement is true or false. What I also really like is that it’s endless. With every mathematical problem that you solve, new problems pop up and ask to be tackled. The abstract and theoretical side of my work motivates me but it’s a nice side-effect that some of what I do helps make our digital world a safer place."

Source: How quantum mechanics threatens our digital lives – and makes them safer. Dagmar Aarts (UL).

More information

• See also the earlier CWI news item: Serge Fehr appointed as Professor Quantum Information Theory (2018).
• Contact data of Serge Fehr at CWI