Project Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Simulation Program DUIRI - Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship Term Fall 2026 Status Accepted Research Area Mathematics and Physics Description In quantum cryptography, the foundational quantum key exchange protocol is called BB84. The projects investigates eavesdropping attacks on this protocol, in particular, the affect of noise causing decoherence on the eavesdropper's quantum memory. We will investigate the following question: How does modeling the noise of an eavesdropper's quantum memory affect information gain and possible detection in the BB84 quantum cryptographic protocol? In standard BB84, Alice sends quantum states from a randomly chosen incompatible bases, and Bob later measures them. The security comes from the fact that an eavesdropper (the literature calls Eve) cannot learn the state without disturbing it. If Eve measures immediately in the wrong basis, she creates errors that Alice and Bob can detect through an increased quantum bit error rate (QBER). Additionally, the no cloning theorem also prevents her from simply copying the state and measuring copies in all possible bases. However, a more powerful attack is not to clone the state, but to delay its measurement. If Eve can store quantum information coherently, she can wait until Alice and Bob publicly reveal basis information, then choose a better measurement later. In that sense, Eve’s ability to cheat depends on the quality of her quantum memory. If her memory is noisy, then decoherence, dephasing, dissipation, or other physical noise processes may degrade the stored quantum side information before she can use it. While the BB84 protocol is well established, our new idea is how Eve’s memory is modeled. In the literature, the adversary storage is represented abstractly as a noisy channel, often with independent noise acting on each qubit. The novelty of our question would be to model the quantum memory as a physical many body open system. Supervisor Erika Birgit Kaufmann Mentor Ralph Martin Kaufmann Type of work required Scientific modeling of noise in quantum memory. Mostly coding on a quantum simulator or quantum computer. Websites https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397514004241?via%3Dihub Qualifications Basic understanding of quantum mechanics and quantum computing. Experience in Python and Jupyter notebooks. Credit Hours 0 Weekly Hours 10 (estimated)