Sebastianus A. Goorden, Marcel Horstmann, Allard P. Mosk, Boris Škorić, Pepijn W. H. Pinkse
Authentication, which provides the trust people need to engage in transactions, is achieved with biometric, digital or physical keys that prove "who you are", "what you know" or "what you have". The advent of physical keys that are impossible to copy promises to revolutionize this field. Up to now, such keys are verified by classical challenge-response protocols. Such keys are, however, in general susceptible to hacking. Here we demonstrate Quantum-Secure Authentication ("QSA") of an unclonable classical physical key in a way that is inherently secure by virtue of quantum-physical principles. Our quantum-secure readout operates in a limit so far unexplored in experimental quantum information processing: that of a large number of channels, represented by the more than thousand degrees of freedom of an optical wavefront shaped with a spatial light modulator. This allows us to reach quantum security with weak coherent pulses of light containing dozens of photons, too few for an attacker to intercept its complex spatial shape, thereby rigorously preventing hacking. QSA yields an unprecedentedly secure way of authentication, without the need for physical contact between the key and the readout device.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0142
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