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Guaranteed randomness

Nature volume 464, pages 988–989 (2010)Cite this article

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You have received a device that is claimed to produce random numbers, but you don't trust it. Can you check it without opening it? In some cases, you can, thanks to the bizarre nature of quantum physics.

From the stock market to the weather, we are surrounded by processes that are best described by unpredictable, random elements. But randomness is a notoriously difficult property to test. Worse still, when it is used to protect personal details, the random elements must be private. On page 1021 of this issue, Pironio and co-workers1 describe a method for obtaining numbers that are guaranteed to be random and private from an unknown process, provided that the numbers are certified as being derived from measurements on quantum systems. Some may surmise that this claim is trivial, because quantum physics has long been known to produce randomness. Some may even surmise that this claim is wrong, on the basis of the idea illustrated by the Dilbert comic strip 'Tour of Accounting' reproduced here. But the result is both new and correct.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Valerio Scarani is at the Centre for Quantum Technologies and the Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 117543 Singapore. physv@nus.edu.sg,

    Valerio Scarani

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  1. Valerio Scarani
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Scarani, V. Guaranteed randomness. Nature 464, 988–989 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464988a

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