[Cryptography] Two physics experiment questions

[Andrea Barontini]

> 
> Secondly, Shor's algorithm is over thirty years old, dating from before when
> some of the people currently working on PQC stuff were born.  What triggered
> the panic over the last few years?

as far as I know, there has been a loto of work on quantum error 
correcting codes. Legacy Surface codes seem well established from a 
theoretical PoV and seem quite well suited to planar design as the one 
of supercomputing qubits QC... that's significant: the first and so the 
most studied actual QC implementation playing nice with a solid QEC.

But the logical qubits/physical qubits ratio is still too low, so here 
they are the new guys in town, qLDPC "generalizing" Surface Codes 
gaining better logical/physical ratio even if worsening locality.

So imho the panic is because the question is: can we build quantum 
actual computers, no matter how high is their totat cost of production, 
ownership and operations? (which seems an unrealistic and unsustainable 
question, but not so much if we think to military specs). Without a good 
QEC it is thought to be impossible, and last years turmoil and 
developments in this field gives good feelings.

Then there are vendor marketing news, that are to be taken as what they 
are, marketing. BUT, e.g., Google in a recent paper used ZKPs to prove 
but not release publicly its improvements, which has been read a strong 
signal that something to be commercially protected begin to exist.

> 
> Peter.

Bye
Andrea