20 SEPTEMBER 2002 | Ravikanth Pappu, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, Neil Gershenfeld
This text presents a study on the physical one-way functions (POWFs) based on the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium. The research demonstrates that the microstructure of a disordered medium can be used to generate unique identifiers by physically reducing the medium's microstructure to a fixed-length string of binary digits. These physical one-way functions are inexpensive to fabricate, prohibitively difficult to duplicate, admit no compact mathematical representation, and are intrinsically tamper-resistant. The study provides an authentication protocol based on the enormous address space that is a principal characteristic of physical one-way functions.
The research also discusses the use of laser speckle fluctuations to generate a 2400-bit key from the speckle intensity of a 3D inhomogeneous structure. The key is generated by discretely sampling the speckle intensity and using a Gabor transform to produce a 2400-bit key. The study shows that the key is relatively insensitive to mechanical misregistration and has a high level of repeatability. The results indicate that the key has a theoretical key space size on the order of 2^233 distinguishable keys.
The study also discusses the security of the physical one-way function, showing that the space of possible input illumination and output keys is so large that it is infeasible to store all possible illumination-key pairs. The research further explores the practical challenges of duplicating the token, showing that submicron changes in scatterer location can cause order unity changes in output speckle intensity. The study also discusses the possibility of replay attacks and the need for secure storage of illumination-key pairs.
The text also includes a detailed discussion on the quantum solvation of carbonyl sulfide with helium atoms, showing that the appearance of sharp infrared spectral features of dopant molecules in He nanodroplets is an indicator of the onset of superfluidity. The study uses high-resolution spectroscopy to investigate the properties of He-N-OCS clusters and shows that the rotational constant B of He-N-molecule systems saturates at relatively small N. The research concludes that the study provides a new approach to information security by using physical one-way functions based on the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium.This text presents a study on the physical one-way functions (POWFs) based on the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium. The research demonstrates that the microstructure of a disordered medium can be used to generate unique identifiers by physically reducing the medium's microstructure to a fixed-length string of binary digits. These physical one-way functions are inexpensive to fabricate, prohibitively difficult to duplicate, admit no compact mathematical representation, and are intrinsically tamper-resistant. The study provides an authentication protocol based on the enormous address space that is a principal characteristic of physical one-way functions.
The research also discusses the use of laser speckle fluctuations to generate a 2400-bit key from the speckle intensity of a 3D inhomogeneous structure. The key is generated by discretely sampling the speckle intensity and using a Gabor transform to produce a 2400-bit key. The study shows that the key is relatively insensitive to mechanical misregistration and has a high level of repeatability. The results indicate that the key has a theoretical key space size on the order of 2^233 distinguishable keys.
The study also discusses the security of the physical one-way function, showing that the space of possible input illumination and output keys is so large that it is infeasible to store all possible illumination-key pairs. The research further explores the practical challenges of duplicating the token, showing that submicron changes in scatterer location can cause order unity changes in output speckle intensity. The study also discusses the possibility of replay attacks and the need for secure storage of illumination-key pairs.
The text also includes a detailed discussion on the quantum solvation of carbonyl sulfide with helium atoms, showing that the appearance of sharp infrared spectral features of dopant molecules in He nanodroplets is an indicator of the onset of superfluidity. The study uses high-resolution spectroscopy to investigate the properties of He-N-OCS clusters and shows that the rotational constant B of He-N-molecule systems saturates at relatively small N. The research concludes that the study provides a new approach to information security by using physical one-way functions based on the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium.