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May 26, 2022 A theoretical breakthrough in understanding quantum chaos could open new paths into researching quantum information and quantum computing, many-body physics, black holes, and the still-elusive quantum to classical transition.

By applying balanced energy gain and loss to an open quantum system, we found a way to overcome a previously held limitation that assumed interactions with the surrounding environment would decrease quantum chaos, said Avadh Saxena, a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and member of the team that published thepaper on quantum chaosin Physical Review Letters. This discovery points to new directions in studying quantum simulations and quantum information theory.

Quantum chaos differs from classical-physics chaos theory. The latter seeks to understand deterministic, or non-random, patterns and systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. The so-called butterfly effect is the most familiar example, whereby the flap of a butterflys wings in Texas could, through a bewilderingly complicated but not random chain of cause and effect, lead to a tornado in Kansas.

On the other hand, quantum chaos describes chaotic classical dynamical systems in terms of quantum theory. Quantum chaos is responsible for the scrambling of information occurring in complex systems such as blackholes. It reveals itself in the energy spectra of the system, in the form of correlations between its characteristic modes and frequencies.

It has been believed that as a quantum system loses coherence, or its quantumness, by coupling to the environment outside the systemthe so-called quantum to classical transitionthe signatures of quantum chaos are suppressed. That means they cant be exploited as quantum information or as a state that can be manipulated.

It turns out thats not entirely true. Saxena, University of Luxembourg physicists Aurelia Chenu and Adolfo del Campo, and collaborators found that the dynamical signatures of quantum chaos are actually enhanced, not suppressed, in some instances.

Our work challenges the expectation that decoherence generally suppresses quantum chaos, Saxena said.

The energy values in the spectra of the quantum system were previously thought to be complex numbersthat is, numbers with an imaginary number componentand thus not useful in an experimental setting. But by adding energy gain and loss at symmetrical points in the system, the research team found real values for the energy spectra, provided that the strength of gain or loss is below a critical value.

Balanced energy gain and loss provides a physical mechanism to realize in the laboratory the kind of energy-spectral filtering that has become ubiquitous in theoretical and numerical studies of complex many-body quantum systems, del Campo said. Specifically, balanced energy gain and loss in energy dephasing leads to the optimal spectral filter. Thus, one could leverage balanced energy gain and loss as an experimental tool not only to probe quantum chaos but to study many-body quantum systems in general.

By changing the decoherence, Saxena and del Campo explained, the filter allows better control of energy distribution in the system. That can be useful in quantum information, for example.

Decoherence limits quantum computing, so it follows that because increasing quantum chaos reduces decoherence, you can keep computing longer, Saxena said.

The teams paper builds on previous theoretical work by Carl Bender (of Washington University at St. Louis and former Ulam scholar at Los Alamos) and Stefan Boettcher (formerly of Los Alamos and now at Emory University). They found that, contrary to the accepted paradigm from the early twentieth century, some quantum systems yielded real energies under certain symmetries even though their Hamiltonian was not Hermitian, which means it satisfies certain mathematical relations. In general, such systems are known as non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. A Hamiltonian defines the energy of the system.

The prevailing understanding was that decoherence suppresses quantum chaos for Hermitian systems, with real energy values, Saxena said. So we thought, what if we take a non-Hermitian system?

The research paper studied the example of pumping energy into a wave guide at a particular pointthats the gainthen pumping energy out againthe losssymmetrically. The wave guide is an open system, able to exchange energy with the environment. Instead of causing decoherence, they found, the process and interactions increase coherence and quantum chaos.

Paper:Spectral filtering induced by non-Hermitian evolution with balanced gain and loss: enhancing quantum chaos,by J. Cornelius, Z. Xu, A. Saxena, A. Chenu and A. del Campo, in Physical Review Letters. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.190402

Funding:The work was supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Source: LANL

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Researchers Find Coherence in Quantum Chaos - HPCwire

WATERLOO, ONTARIO May 25, 2022 BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB)today announced it will provide support for quantum-resistant secure boot signatures for NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI) crypto-agile S32G vehicle networking processors in a demonstration to illustrate how to mitigate the risk of potential quantum computing attacks on in-vehicle software.

The new integration will allow software to be digitally signed using the National Institute of Standards and Technologys (NIST) recently endorsed CRYSTALS Dilithium digital signature scheme that will be quantum resistant, providing peace of mind to those relying on and delivering long lifecycle assets such as systems in critical infrastructure, industrial controls, aerospace and military electronics, telecommunications, transportation infrastructure, and connected cars. The collaboration is set to guard against an increasingly risky future when quantum computers will be able to easily break traditional code signing schemes.

For more information, register to attend the one hour Post-Quantum Cyber Attacks, how to Prepare and Prevent webinar on June 9, 2022 at 11:00 a.m. ET.

While quantum computing promises to deliver huge leaps forward in processing power, it also has the potential to render today's public key cryptography useless. In recent months, NATO, the White House and NIST have all taken steps to prepare for a Y2Q scenario in which quantum computers become weaponized by threat actors and many widely used security methods become useless against next-generation attacks.

The BlackBerry Certicom Code Signing and Key Management Server leverages the NXP S32G chips secure boot flow to achieve fast and agile quantum protection. Using quantum-resistant signature schemes such as Dilithium for low-level device firmware, over-the-air software updates and software bills of material (SBOMs) mitigates the risk of potential quantum computing attacks on critical software updates, addressing a major security concern for a number of industries.

As quantum computers continue to advance in development, its increasingly important to work to secure todays systems against these future threats, said Joppe Bos, Senior Principal Cryptographer at NXP Semiconductors. Collaborating with BlackBerry strengthens our solution to address the critical need to harden code signing and software update infrastructure against future cryptosystem vulnerabilities.

In the lead up to Y2K, US business spent upwards of $100 billion to avoid calamity and the issue was simply a matter of adding two digits to the date field. Y2Q, when quantum attacks become possible, is on another level, posing a significant threat to industries selling or operating long-lived assets with updatable software, said Jim Alfred, VP, BlackBerry Technology Solutions. NXP shares our vision of mitigating the risk of quantum computing concerns and, thanks to their support for hash-based signatures, together we can provide cybersecurity teams with the tools they need now to prevent their existing security measures from becoming obsolete.

To learn more about the Code Signing and Key Management Server and why BlackBerry Certicom technology is widely deployed in smartphone chips, smart meters, car telematics, and IoT devices, please visit http://www.certicom.com.

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About BlackBerry

BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments around the world. The company secures more than 500M endpoints including over 195M vehicles. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company leverages AI and machine learning to deliver innovative solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety and data privacy solutions, and is a leader in the areas of endpoint security, endpoint management, encryption, and embedded systems. BlackBerrys vision is clear - to secure a connected future you can trust.

BlackBerry. Intelligent Security. Everywhere.

For more information, visit BlackBerry.com and follow @BlackBerry.

NXP and the NXP logo are trademarks ofNXP B.V. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.2022 NXP B.V.

Trademarks, including but not limited to BLACKBERRY and EMBLEM Design are the trademarks or registered trademarks of BlackBerry Limited, and the exclusive rights to such trademarks are expressly reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services.

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Media Contact:BlackBerry Media Relations+1 (519) 597-7273mediarelations@BlackBerry.com

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BlackBerry and NXP Join Forces to Help Companies Prepare For and Prevent Y2Q Post-Quantum Cyber Attacks - BlackBerry

The previous two years have proven the importance of proactively working to secure our data, especially as organizations underwent digital transformations and suffered increased cyberattacks as a result. For those organizations that have been breached, but their data hasnt yet been exploited and released to the wild, it may already be too late.

Organizations that have already experienced a data breach may become victims of harvest today, decrypt tomorrow or capture-now-decrypt-later attacks. These attacks, also referred to as harvesting for short, capitalize on known vulnerabilities to steal data that may not even be truly accessible using todays decryption technologies.

These attacks require long-term planning and projections on the advancement of quantum-computing technologies. While these technologies may still be years away from being commercially available and widely used, organizations should look to protect against these threats now to prevent themselves from becoming a future casualty.

Before getting into more detail on the future threat posed by quantum computing, we should look to a historic example to inform our present decision-making.

Lessons from the Enigma

In 1919 a Dutchman invented an encoding machine that was universally adopted by the German army, called the Enigma. Unbeknownst to Germany, the Allied powers managed to break the coding scheme, and were able to decode some messages as early as 1939, when the first German boots set foot in Poland. For years, however, the German army believed the Enigma codes were unbreakable and was communicating in confidence, never realizing their messages were out in the open.

History may already be repeating itself. I cant help but think that most organizations today also believe that their encrypted data is safe, but someone else may be close to, or already, reading their secure mail without them even knowing.

Todays modern cryptography is often deemed unbreakable, but a big, shiny black building in Maryland suggests that governments may be better at this than is widely believed. Although a lot of credit goes to the magical and elusive quantum computer, the reality is different: poor implementations of crypto suites are the primary vector for breaking encryption of captured traffic. So are certificates captured through other means, brute-forced passwords and even brute-forced crypto, because insufficient entropy is used to generate random numbers.

All these techniques are part of the arsenal of any nation who wants to strategically collect information on the happenings of other international playerswhether government or private companies. These techniques also require higher levels of coordination and financial backing to be a successful part of an intelligence strategy. As I continue to see, when the value of the captured information is high enough, the investment is worth it. Consider then the vast data centers being built by many governments: they are full of spinning disks of memory storage just in case current approaches don't yield access. Data storage has become an investment in the future of intelligence gathering.

Looking towards the future

Harvesting attacks does not just work as a strategy for quantum computers. We will likely have more powerful processors for brute-forcing in the future. Additionally, other types of stochastic computation machines, such as spintronics, are showing promise and even the de-quantification of popular algorithms may one day see a binary computer version of Peter Shors algorithm. The latter helps us explain how quantum computing may help to make quick work of current encryption techniques. This will allow breaking of Diffie-Hellman key exchanges or RSA on a conventional computer in smaller time frames.

So how do we shield ourselves? It is hard to imagine armoring oneself against any possible threat to encryption. Just like it is difficult to predict exactly which stocks will do well, and which ones won't. There are too many factors and too much chaos. One is left with only the option of diversification: using an out-of-band key distributing strategy that allows multiple paths for key and data to flow, and a range of algorithms and keys to be used. By diversifying our cryptographic approaches we are also able to minimize the damage in case a particular strategy fails us. Monocultures are at risk of pandemics, let's not fall victim to encryption monoculture as we move into the future.

It is past time to take steps now that will protect organizations from future threats. This includes developing actionable standards. Both federal agencies and the private sector need to embrace quantum-safe encryption. Additionally, they should look to develop next-generation, standards-based systems that will address current encryption method shortcomings and poor key management practices. This will help to ensure not only quantum-safe protection from future threats, but also stronger security from contemporary threats.

Organizations face a dizzying array of threats and need to constantly remain vigilant to thwart attacks. While looking to protect against current threats is certainly important, organizations should begin projecting future threats, including the threat posed by quantum computing. As technology continues to advance each day, one should remember that past encryption, like the Enigma machine, didnt remain an enigma for long and was broken in time. The advent of quantum computing may soon make our unbreakable codes go the way of the dinosaur. Prepare accordingly.

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Back to the Future: Protecting Against Quantum Computing - Nextgov

Three notable earnings releases were made in the past few days and it is interesting to review them and see the progress each has made in the past year.

IonQ announced Q1 revenue of $2.0 million, bookings of $4.2 million, and EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) loss of $10.3 million. This compares to their forecast made at the end of March of Q1 revenue between $1.8 to $2.0 million and bookings of $3 to $4 million. They are continuing to estimate full year 2022 revenue at $10.2 to $10.7 million, but have raised their estimate of 2022 bookings from$20.0 to $24.0 million to a new range of $23.0 to $27.0 million. The company ended the period with a cash and short term investments balance of about $415 million.

In other announcements during the release, they discussed their technology roadmap and a new system called Forte, which we covered in more detail here. They also mentioned they are building a second 32 qubit Aria system to meet customer demand. One interesting comment for us was their mention of rising customer interest in purchasing systems for on-premise use which may result in a potential increase in their forecast of contract bookings from their original plan. Reasons for this include customers desire to avoid waiting in a queue with other customers for access to a cloud based system as well as data security concerns.

Additional details from IonQs Q1 earnings release can be seen in a press release posted on their website here as well as webcast recording of their Q1 earnings call here.

Rigetti report Q1 revenue of $2.1 million and an EBITDA loss of $13.9 million. The Q1 2022 revenue was lower than Q1 2021 which had revenue of $2.4 million. Rigetti attributed this to the completion of the first phase of a large government agency project in the first quarter of 2021. The company forecasted total 2022 revenue to be between $12 and $13 million with and EBITDA loss for the year in the range between $52 and $53 million. The company ended the period with a cash balance of about $206 million.

Rigetti also discussed their future roadmap plans which we covered here. They also discussed some of the challenges they are facing in their technical developments including higher than anticipated costs for labor, equipment, and system components, market and supply chain conditions, and available working capital. You can read Rigettis press release with their earnings announcement here and listen to the webcast discussing the results here.

Arqit reported their results for their first fiscal half year which covers the six month period ending on March 31, 2022. They achieved revenue for the period of $12.3 million with an adjusted loss before tax of $14.4 million. The revenue came from $5.3 million in QuantumCloud revenue and $7.0 million from a project contract from the European Space Agency.

The company also announced announced that shareholders holding 105.9 million of the 108.6 million shares currently subject to lock-up agreements that were due to expire have volunteered to extend their lock-up agreements until September. The company ended the period with a cash balance of $82 million. Arqits press release with their financial results can be accessed here.

May 18, 2022

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Earning Releases: IonQ, Rigetti, and Arqit - Quantum Computing Report

Written by Jon Harper May 19, 2022 | FEDSCOOP

U.S. Special Operations Command is worried about the future threat from adversaries quantum technologies, and officials are trying to get out ahead of the problem.

Improving intelligence fusion through real-time data integration is a key pillar of SOCOMs plans for digital transformation. That data must not only be gathered, fused and transferred to the appropriate end users; it also has to be secured a challenge that will grow with the development of quantum computing capabilities.

How do we get after the way those bits and bytes interact with each other and create the intelligence that we need, while at the same time protecting that data, you know, ensuring that the data is trustworthy? Thomas Kenney, chief data officer at Special Operations Command, said Thursday at the SOFIC conference.

Heres a really interesting aspect of this that were looking at today because we know in a few years this is going to become really important by some accounts, were less than eight years away from quantum cryptography being able to break the non-quantum cryptography that we have today We need an answer for that, he said.

When the technology is ready for prime time, officials say it could be a game changer.

Data may very easily be decrypted by a capability that has a quantum decrypt capability, Kenney warned.

The time is now to be thinking about that problem before adversaries have already acquired that capability, he added.

Technology developers are putting a lot of effort into quantum computing, he noted, highlighting the implications of quantum processing.

One of the really interesting tenants of quantum computing is that you can compute multiple outcomes simultaneously. And when you think about the speed of battle and where were going to, that ability will be absolutely essential, Kenney said.

Quantum computing is being played with right now. And we look at where were going for quantum cryptography, we need about a factor of 1,000 qubits to be able to get to that next level, he said.

A qubit is a computing unit that leverages the principle of superposition the ability of quantum systems to exist in two or more states simultaneously to encode information, the Congressional Research Service explained in a recent report on the technology.

Whereas a classical computer encodes information in bits that can represent binary states of either 0 or 1, a quantum computer encodes information in qubits, each of which can represent 0, 1, or a combination of both at the same time. As a result, the power of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the addition of each qubit, according to CRS.

Being able to have multiple outcomes calculated at the same time on a battlefield thats happening extremely fast is going to be mission essential to us. Are the technologies there today? Maybe not. But they certainly need to be there in the future, so its something that were taking a look at, Kenney said.

Earlier this month, President Biden signed two new policy directives aimed at advancing U.S. quantum technologies and the ability to defend U.S. infrastructure against the threat posed by quantum computers.

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Special Operations Command trying to prepare for quantum computing threat - FedScoop