Can I trust you? Let’s flip a coin
How can two mistrustful parties fairly toss a coin? As it turns out, this problem of weak coin flipping (WCF) is a fundamental cryptographic primitive, where quantum WCF can achieve theoretically perfect information security over modern communication networks.
In this recent work, researchers from Sorbonne Université, the University of Vienna, California Institute of Technology and Université de Paris have—for the first time—experimentally demonstrated this primitive [1]. Among a number of conceptual and practical challenges, such a demonstration was made possible thanks to the use of high-efficiency SNSPDs, where the team made good use of an ID281 Series SNSPD system.
[1] ‘Experimental cheat-sensitive quantum weak coin flipping’, Simon Neves, Ulysse Chabaud, Mathieu Bozzio, Iordanis Kerenidis, and Eleni Diamanti, arXiv 2211.03472 (2022)
