Quantum Crypto: Anecdote

[Mark Chen]

> Given the regularity with which fears of factoring by quantum
> compters comes up around here, I thought I'd share a brief story: At
> a party last night, I ran into a couple of acquantances, and was
> delighted to learn that they are working on the current NIST quantum
> computing project, making quantum gates out of atomic traps similar
> to those used by Cornell and Weiman to get a Bose condensate with
> Rubidium (crypto relevance comes from odd places, eh?) Anyway, I
> talked them up a bit, and so far they've managed to construct a
> working "or" gate. The long-term project is to construct a quantum
> computer capable of factoring 15, which they expect to take at least
> several years.

Vazirani gave a talk at Parc a couple weeks ago, at which he described
a similar project under way at Los Alamos.  It's allegedly being
headed by Richard Hughes.

   - Mark -


--
Mark Chen 
chen at intuit.com
415/329-6913
finger for PGP public key
D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C  CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D