Quantum Cryptography - Advances in computer science may radically alter cryptography

Critical questions raised by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) on locality, reality and completeness inspired many researchers to study quantitatively the difference between quantum physics and classical physics. In time, these researches led naturally to the idea of quantum computing. Unlike classical computers, with quantum computers the computational space increases exponentially with the size of the system. This allows exponential parallelism, which could lead to exponentially faster quantum algorithms than is possible with non-quantum computers. If advances in quantum computing follow Moore’s Law, a 30-qubit quantum computer will be available by the year 2007, which would ran at approximately 10 teraflops. Further advances in quantum computing would render current methods of encryption useless. The solution naturally lies in the application of quantum effects in the area of cryptography. Quantum cryptography is a method for secure communications offering the assurance of the inviolability of a natural physical law. Research in the area of quantum cryptography must be given a high priority to ensure the availability of new methods should the era of quantum computing dawn.