Pushing the Boundaries of Classical and Quantum Information Processing Toward Enhanced Security and Energy-Efficient Reliability

This research aims to disrupt two types of boundaries that often emerge within classical and quantum information science. The first type of boundary refers to certain conceptual roadblocks that prevent a translation of results and scientific ideas between the domains of classical and quantum information theory. In this project, three topics are identified that have promise for a cross-fertilization and unified analysis across the classical-quantum divide.

Specifically, the PIs bring expertise from both classical and quantum backgrounds to investigate the problems of multi-party correlation measures, cryptographic protocols, and energy-efficient error correction. The results obtained will have direct relevance to the development of technologies in the information-security and energy sectors. The second type of boundary challenged by this work refers to barriers frequently encountered by underrepresented populations entering STEM fields.

This project has plans to initiate a summer internship program between the PIs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and historically black college and universities (HBCUs).

On a technical level, this research will develop new measures of private correlations and quantum with clear operational meanings. Building on insights from the subject of quantum resource theories, a resource theory of secret sharing will be constructed for both classical and quantum states, and the utility of a given state for secret sharing will be quantified.

Additionally, fundamental questions in the study of classical and quantum cryptography will be addressed. The existence of one-way functions is known to be the weakest assumption necessary for many cryptographic tasks in the classical setting, and the proposed research will look for the analogous minimal quantum assumption. A significant objective will be to understand the conditions in which one type of secure quantum cryptographic functionality can be used to simulate another.

As a complement to the work on cryptography, this research will investigate circuit complexity and the energy limits of reliable quantum information processing. Analysis techniques from circuit complexity, information theory, thermodynamics, and fault-tolerant computing will be used to understand how resources like area and energy are constrained in a given computational process.

As one application, an energy perspective on superquantum violations of the CHSH inequality will be taken for the first time. This work will also introduce the concept of quantum creativity and bring artificial intelligence into quantum computing to support human creativity.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.