Abstract: Protecting sensitive information in computer systems is a central mission of cryptography today, and will continue to be an important goal during the age of quantum computation. Program obfuscation, which renders code unintelligible without harming its functionality, is an immensely powerful and versatile tool for accomplishing this task. However, despite decades of progress on obfuscating classical computation, the ability to obfuscate quantum computation had remained elusive, even with the widespread use of quantum technology on the horizon.
This talk will cover a series of recent results that establish the feasibility of obfuscating general-purpose classes of quantum computation, and explore the implications of this ability. The power of quantum obfuscation goes beyond its most immediate applications, and we will discuss its deep connections with several important areas of study within quantum computational science, including classical verification of quantum computation and unclonable cryptography.
Bio: James Bartusek is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is advised by Sanjam Garg. His research interests span cryptography and quantum computation, with a particular focus on their interplay.
