The recent press release of India (Dated on Dec 29, 2020), stated that “India has successfully developed the Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG)”.
DRDO Young Scientist Laboratory for Quantum Technologies (DYSL-QT) has successfully detected and recorded the random quantum events as binary digits. The indigenous development of fiber-optic branch path based generated random numbers (QRNG) are evaluated and verified using DRDO’s indigenously developed Randomness Testing Statistical Test Suite of SAG. The successful development QRNG guides India to enter the elite club of countries who have the technology to achieve the generation of random numbers using Quantum Phenomenon.
Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG)
Truly random numbers are the need of the hour in cryptography to enrich the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNGs) since PRNGs rely on predictable algorithms. The development of unpredictable random numbers is fundamental to secure the systems. The truly random numbers through the quantum mechanics process will definitely provide an unbreakable toolset for cryptography.
Everyone believes that future of cybersecurity is the QRNG.
The first company to develop a quantum random number generator (RNG) in 2001 and it remains the market leader in terms of reliability, certifications and Swiss engineering, with its successive versions of hardware RNGs.
ID Quantique
Quantum RNGs exploit elementary quantum optic processes that are fundamentally probabilistic to produce true randomness. Furthermore, there are researchers developing a new methodology to upgrade QRNG functions. The recent research work demonstrated the Quantum random number generators with entanglement for public randomness testing.
a simple idealistic quantum entanglement based protocol for quantum random number generation allowing a trusted third party to publicly perform arbitrarily complex tests of randomness without any violation of the secrecy of the generated bit sequences. The protocol diminishes also an average time of the randomness testing (thus enabling arbitrary shortening of this time with increasing number of entangled qubits).
Lucjan Jacak et al. Sci Rep 10, 164 (2020).
India’s QRNG
In the race of developing QRNGs, now (end of 2020) DRDO Young Scientist Laboratory for Quantum Technologies (DYSL-QT) has developed a QRNG, which detects random quantum events and converts them into a stream of binary digits.
Methodology
The Laboratory has developed a fiber-optic branch path based QRNG. Branch path based QRNG is based on the principle that if a single photon is incident on a balanced beam splitter, it will take either of the beam-splitter output paths randomly. As the path chosen by photon is random, the randomness is translated to sequence of bits.
Evaluation
QRNG system developed by the laboratory has passed the global randomness testing standards viz. NIST and Die-harder Statistical Test Suites at the speed of ~150 kbps after post-processing.
Bierhorst, P., Knill, E., Glancy, S. et al. Experimentally generated randomness certified by the impossibility of superluminal signals. Nature 556, 223–226 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0019-0
Jacak, J.E., Jacak, W.A., Donderowicz, W.A. et al. Quantum random number generators with entanglement for public randomness testing. Sci Rep 10, 164 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56706-2