Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a scheme for quantum-secure communication. The basic idea of the scheme consists of two parties establishing a shared secret - a quantum-mechanically generated key, that can be used for encryption. We are interested in the implementation of quantum key distribution mainly because modern day classical encryption - e.g. the RSA algorithm - is partly based on mathematically hard problems, such as prime factorization, that may be solved more easily with future quantum computers. In other words, the advancement of powerful quantum computers is going to be troublesome for communication security. Thus quantum key distribution is one of the counter-measures that can be taken to make secure communication possible in the future.
This repository is the work contributed by the group "One Zero" for the Qiskit Hackathon @ World of QUANTUM 2022 (original repository). It contains the solutions of the proposed challenges and a lesson on quantum key distribution meant for undergratue students. The lesson consists of slides introducing QKD and the BB84 protocoland a jupyter notebook containing a hands-on tutorial and exercises on the topic.
Prerequisites for this lecture the fundamental quantum gates and working with Python and Qiskit. Some previous knowledge in quantum mechanics (e.g. from earlier qiskit lectures) is necessary.
Find exercise solutions (part 1 of the challenge) here
For giving the lecture, please follow the lecture outline, to be found here. Additional material:
- Lecture slides (here)
- Interactive website for demonstrating BB84 (prototype here)
- Jupyter notebook incl. demonstration + exercises (found in this folder)
[1] https://qiskit.org/textbook/ch-algorithms/quantum-key-distribution.html
[2] https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.441
[3] https://medium.com/quantum-untangled/quantum-key-distribution-and-bb84-protocol-6f03cc6263c5