DIRO, Université de Montréal

Jeudi 23 novembre, 15:30-16:30, Salle 3195, Pavillon André-Aisenstadt

Quantum computers pose a serious threat to modern cryptography: they weaken symmetric cryptography and totally break the public-key cryptography based on factoring and discrete-log. The most cryptographically relevant quantum algorithms are Grover's searching algorithm (quadratically faster than any classical brute force searching scheme) and Shor's factoring algorithm (exponentially faster than the best known classical factoring algorithm - the number sieve). In this talk I will describe how feasible is to run those algorithms (or variants of them) on a realistic quantum architecture, taking fault-tolerance into account, and quantify the resources (time and number of qubits) required to run them. I will show that the overhead introduced by the need for quantum error correction is significant, and has to be taken into account when analyzing the security of cryptographic schemes against quantum adversaries.

Au sujet du conférencier : Dr. Vlad Gheorghiu is a postdoctoral researcher working with Michele Mosca at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, ON Canada.  Vlad is also the CEO and co-founder of softwareQ Inc., a quantum software and quantum information processing company in Waterloo, ON Canada. He collaborates as well on quantum risk assessment with evolutionQ Inc., ON Canada.

Vlad is a member of CryptoWorks21 Quantum-Safe Cryptographic Infrastructure Program and a member of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Quantum-Safe Cryptography Standardization Group.

Vlad holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, USA.  His current research interests lie in post-quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, quantum cryptanalysis and resource estimation for realistic implementations of quantum algorithms, entanglement theory, quantum software and quantum architectures, as well as applications of machine learning techniques to the quantum domain.