U.S. Army Researchers Developing Safeguards for Quantum Communications

(ArmyRecognition) U.S. Army researchers have developed a new way to protect and safeguard quantum information, moving quantum networks a step closer to reality.
the new quantum paradigms could potentially lead to transformational capabilities in fast, efficient and secure collecting, exchanging and processing vast amounts of information on dynamic battlefields of the future. Drs. Dan Jones, Brian Kirby and Michael Brodsky from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, joined by Gabriele Riccardi and Professor Cristian Antonelli from the University of L’Aquila, studied sources of noise in quantum communication channels.
According to Brodsky, quantum communications are no different in their susceptibility to noise in communication channels. In fact, even more so than the regular classic communications because the quantum signals are extremely low power. “To engineer a useful quantum network, we need to understand how far, how fast and how reliably we could send quantum information,” Brodsky said. “That requires an understanding of the noise in communication channels.”
As the team modeled, emulated, characterized and measured different types of noise in quantum channels, the researchers realized that while some quantum noise types are impossible to filter out, others could be removed quite easily.
Surprisingly, it turns out that the bad noise could be converted into good noise by simply adding a cheap extra component to the quantum channel. Having this extra control allows them to tweak the channel and to adjust the properties of the noise that masks the transmitted signal.