CIS Seminar: “Obfuscation of Quantum Computation”

Protecting secrets within computer systems is a central mission of cryptography. Program obfuscation, which scrambles computer code without harming its functionality, is an immensely powerful and versatile tool for accomplishing this task that has been the subject of intense study in classical cryptography. Yet, the ability to obfuscate quantum computation had previously remained elusive to researchers, even with the widespread use of quantum technology on the horizon.

This talk will demonstrate how quantum information-processing systems can keep secrets, and explore the implications of this ability. In particular, we will cover a series of recent results that establish the feasibility of obfuscating general-purpose quantum computation, and reveal deep connections with several important fields of study within quantum computational science, including verification of quantum computation and unclonable cryptography.