From online banking to encrypted messaging, secure communications depend on sequences of random numbers. The challenge is proving that those sequences are genuinely unpredictable. Anatoly Kulikov and colleagues at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have now created a random-number generator that uses a well-known quantum experiment—called a Bell test—to “amplify” an imperfectly random input into certifiable randomness [1].
While quantum random-number generators have been developed previously, this demonstration is the first to generate and certify randomness on a single, integrated platform, without making any assumptions about the inner workings of its hardware. Built using the same type of superconducting circuits that underpin existing quantum technologies, this device design could find broad applications across quantum communications and quantum computing infrastructures.
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