Quantum cryptography wins Descartes prize

From: Michael Anshel (mikeat1140_at_aol.com)
Date: 12/04/04 

Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 21:20:14 +0000 (UTC)

Readers of this newsgroup may find the following item of interest:

http://www.physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/12/2/1

Quantum cryptography wins Descartes prize
2 December 2004
A collaboration that involves physicists from six European countries and the
US has been awarded part of the European Union's Descartes prize for
research for their work on quantum cryptography. They share the
prize
with life scientists studying mitochondrial DNA.
The IST-QuComm collaboration is made up of research groups in Sweden,
Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and the UK, plus a team at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory in the US. Quantum cryptography allows two
parties to share a secret "key" that could make communications between them
much more secure than existing cryptographic techniques by encoding the key
with single photons. Any attempts by a third party to eavesdrop on the
communications can be readily detected. Quantum cryptography could have
applications in electronic communications, e-banking and e-voting.
Progress in quantum cryptography and related areas - such as entanglement
and teleportation - has been rapid in recent years. Last year, for instance,
physicists at the University of Vienna succeeded in sending entangled
photons 600 metres across the river Danube, while a group at the University
of Geneva recently demonstrated quantum teleportation at telecom wavelengths
through a 4-kilometre optical fibre cable. The IST-QuComm consortium also
performed the first ever quantum cryptographic bank transfer over a
6-kilometre fibre link in Vienna this summer.
The prizes were awarded in Prague today by Janez Potocnik, EU commissioner
for science and research.

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Professor Michael Anshel
Department of Computer Sciences R8/206
The City College of New York
New York,New York 10031
http://www-cs.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/~csmma/
csmma@cs.ccny.cuny.edu
MikeAt1140@aol.com

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