Wykład z serii "Maria Skłodowska-Curie lecture"

Serdecznie zapraszamy na wykład prof. Renato Renner z ETH Zurich pt. Cryptographic Insights into Quantum Foundations, który odbędzie się w najbliższy czwartek, o 12:30 w 4420.

Abstract: Imagine being invited to play a game — the Complementarity Game. You prepare a qubit Q and send it to a referee, along with a pair of predictions (z, x). The referee then randomly measures Q in either the computational or diagonal basis, yielding an outcome Z or X, respectively. You win if Z = z or X = x. Quantum theory, via Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, tells us that winning this game with certainty is impossible. This limitation is essential to quantum cryptography: an adversary capable of winning the Complementarity Game could also break quantum key distribution. However, in my talk, I will show that when multiple agents collaborate, they can, in fact, win the Complementarity Game with certainty. This relies on an additional assumption about how agents combine their knowledge — one that is not part of standard quantum theory but is implicit in communication scenarios. The result challenges fundamental assumptions, not only in quantum cryptography but also in the foundations of quantum theory.

Renato Renner was honored with the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations in 2024, and the 2016 Test of Time award from the International Association for Cryptologic Research.

Prof. Renner is the Full Professor at the Department of Physics and the Deputy Head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the ETH Zurich. He studied physics, first at EPF Lausanne and later at ETH Zurich, where he graduated in theoretical physics. He then moved to the Computer Science Department to work on a thesis in the area of quantum cryptography. After getting his PhD degree, he spent two years in the UK, where he was a HP research fellow in the Department for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. In 2007 he started as an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich. He was promoted in 2012 to an Associate Professor and in 2015 to a Full Professor. His research interests include the area of Quantum Information Science, Quantum Thermodynamics, and the Foundations of Quantum Physics.

Feel warmly invited

Magdalena Stobińska