Friday, October 30th at 4:00pm in Kerchof Hall 317 (pizza arrives at 3:45)
Speaker: Prof. Paul Fendley (UVa Department of Physics)
Title: How quantum computers may destroy commerce on the web

Abstract: Encryption algorithms for encoding internet traffic rely on the fact that it is essentially impossible for a conventional computer to prime-factorize large numbers. However, if one could build a computer exploiting the laws of quantum mechanics, one could prime-factorize in polynomial time. I will explain how this works, and how errors threaten the whole idea. I then will discuss a proposal for a topological quantum computer, which would use topological invariants to avoid errors.