2025 · UNC Chapel Hill
Quantum Cryptography
How do you share a secret when someone might be listening? I analyzed the BB84 and E91 quantum key distribution protocols, in which physics itself exposes the eavesdropper, and delivered a public talk with a live demonstration.
The protocols
BB84 encodes bits in conjugate photon bases, so any measurement by an eavesdropper leaves fingerprints in the error rate. E91 goes further and builds the key from entangled pairs, using a Bell test as the security guarantee. I worked through both, including the practical attacks that separate the ideal protocol from real hardware.
The talk
The result was a paper and a public talk with a live demonstration of quantum key exchange, built to make a genuinely strange piece of physics land with a general audience.
The talk, slide by slide
Open the live deck