Conjugate coding

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Conjugate coding is a cryptographic tool, introduced by Stephen Wiesner [1] in the late 1960s. It is part of the two applications Wiesner described for quantum coding, along with a method for creating fraud-proof banking notes. The application that the concept was based on was a method of transmitting multiple messages in such a way that reading one destroys the others. This is called quantum multiplexing and it uses photons polarized in conjugate bases as "qubits" to pass information. [2] Conjugate coding also is a simple extension of a random number generator. [3]

At the behest of Charles Bennett, [3] Wiesner published the manuscript explaining the basic idea of conjugate coding with a number of examples but it was not embraced because it was significantly ahead of its time. [4] Because its publication has been rejected, it was developed to the world of public-key cryptography in the 1980s as Oblivious Transfer, first by Michael Rabin and then by Shimon Even. It is used in the field of quantum computing. The initial concept of quantum cryptography developed by Bennett and Gilles Brassard was also based on this concept. [3]

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Stephen Wiesner

Stephen J. Wiesner is a research physicist currently living in Israel. As a graduate student at Columbia University in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he discovered several of the most important ideas in quantum information theory, including quantum money, quantum multiplexing and superdense coding. Although this work remained unpublished for over a decade, it circulated widely enough in manuscript form to stimulate the emergence of quantum information science in the 1980s and 1990s. Wiesner is the son of Jerome Wiesner and Laya Wiesner. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University.

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References

  1. Wiesner, Stephen (1983). "Conjugate Coding". SIGACT News. 15 (1): 78–88. doi:10.1145/1008908.1008920. ISSN   0163-5700. S2CID   207155055.
  2. Morris, Jeffrey; Grimaila, Michael; Hodson, Douglas; Jacques, David; Baumgartner, Gerald (2013). Emerging Trends in ICT Security: Chapter 9. A Survey of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Technologies. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. ISBN   9780128070666.
  3. 1 2 3 Rogers, Daniel (2010). Broadband Quantum Cryptography. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. p. 31. ISBN   9781608450596.
  4. Morsch, Oliver (2008). Quantum Bits and Quantum Secrets: How Quantum Physics is Revolutionizing Codes and Computers. Berlin: John Wiley & Sons. p. 157. ISBN   9783527407101.