PPPL Intern Joseph Labrum Helped Build Components for a "Zero Knowledge" System That May Have Applicability to Future Nuclear Arms Control Agreements
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - 16:33
in Physics & Chemistry
Joseph Labrum, a Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship student at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, spent his summer internship building components to upgrade an experiment that successfully compared physical objects without learning anything about the objects themselves. Such a "zero-knowledge protocol" system is a promising first step toward a technique that could possibly be used in future disarmament agreements, pending the results of further development, testing, and evaluation. While important questions remain, it might have potential application to verify that nuclear warheads are in fact true warheads without revealing classified information.