Quantum Candies and Quantum Cryptography
This work provides a valuable tool for educators to help the general public gain insights into quantum science and technology, though it is incremental as it builds on an existing model.
The paper tackles the challenge of making quantum information concepts accessible to the general public by extending the 'quantum candies' pedagogical model to demonstrate various quantum cryptography protocols, such as BB84, in an approachable manner without requiring prior knowledge of mathematics, physics, or cryptography.
The field of quantum information is becoming more known to the general public. However, effectively demonstrating the concepts underneath quantum science and technology to the general public can be a challenging job. We investigate, extend, and much expand here "quantum candies" (invented by Jacobs), a pedagogical model for intuitively describing some basic concepts in quantum information, including quantum bits, complementarity, the no-cloning principle, and entanglement. Following Jacob's quantum candies description of the well known quantum key distribution protocol BB84, we explicitly demonstrate various additional quantum cryptography protocols using quantum candies in an approachable manner. The model we investigate can be a valuable tool for science and engineering educators who would like to help the general public to gain more insights about quantum science and technology: most parts of this paper, including many protocols for quantum cryptography, are expected to be easily understandable by a layperson without any previous knowledge of mathematics, physics, or cryptography.