Prof. Pepijn Pinkse

Authentication is essential to ensure trust in communication in modern society. We have demonstrated authentication by the quantum-secure optical readout of a physical unclonable key (PUK). A PUK is a unique key which cannot be physically copied with existing or foreseeable technology. Multiple scattering samples form good optical PUKs. I will here talk about a new communication scheme employing at temporal pulse shaping for remote authentication via standard optical fiber channels. Finally, I will report on photonic quantum simulation results.

Pepijn Pinkse (1970, PhD 1997 UvA) worked in Germany (University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics) in cavity QED and cooling and trapping of atoms and molecules. In 2009 he moved to the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Here he pioneered, together with Boris Skoric and Allard Mosk, Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA), the quantum-secure readout of a multiple scattering key as so-called Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). He now chairs the Adaptive Quantum Optics group and is director of the center for QUAntum Nanotechnology Twente (QUANT). His research combines ideas from quantum optics with nanofabricated scattering media and complex integrated photonic circuits.