No Randomness Like Quantum Randomness

It sounds like an exaggeration, but random number generators (RNGs) run the world. Modern electronic telecomunications don't exist without it, and neither does any form of artificial generation, from pictures to text to video games. Chances are you don't understand it at all, and neither does anyone you know. Lots of people act like they know, like the kinds of people who "predict" the stock market, or lotto numbers. But if you think RNGs are beyond your capacity, give up now, because we're already using quantum RNGs, or QRNGs, and this first article below is like reading another language, while still reading English, a favorite past-time here at Network Address.

Quantum random number generator operates securely and independently of source devices

May 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-quantum-random-generator-independently-source.html

Source-device-independent (source-DI) quantum random number generators (QRNGs) -- The random numbers are extracted by a process that measures the arrival time of a photon from a pair of time–energy entangled photons. The time–energy entangled photon pairs are produced from a spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) process.

The researchers were able to confirm the security of the scheme by certifying the time–energy entanglement though observation of nonlocal dispersion cancelation. To improve security, they employ a modified entropic uncertainty relation to quantify the randomness, taking into account a well-recognized problem of finite measurement range.

via SPIE International Society for Optics and Photonics, Nanjing University: Ji-Ning Zhang et al, Realization of a source-device-independent quantum random number generator secured by nonlocal dispersion cancellation, Advanced Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.5.3.036003

https://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.AP.5.3.036003

Image credit: Illustration of the uncertainty of Earth's orbit 56 million years ago due to a potential past passage of the Sun-like star HD7977 2.8 million years ago - Nathan A Kaib at Planetary Science Institute - Feb 2024 https://phys.org/news/2024-02-stars-orbital-evolution-earth-planets.html

Better cybersecurity with quantum random number generation based on a perovskite light emitting diode

Sep 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-cybersecurity-quantum-random-generation-based.html

Probably the worst science article I ever read but QRNGs; Perovskite LED (PeLED) QRNGs.

via Linköping University: Joakim Argillander et al, Quantum random number generation based on a perovskite light emitting diode, Communications Physics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-023-01280-3

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42005-023-01280-3

Further Reading on Random Number Generators:

Random Instantiation Generator, 2021

https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2021/06/random-instantiation-generator.html

Reality Engines, 2023

https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2023/05/reality-engines.html

Required Reading - Understanding Randomness by way of Slot Machines and Gambling:

Electronic Drugs and Addiction by Design

https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2022/04/electronic-drugs-and-addiction-by-design.html

And on Procedural Generation, one of the more interesting contemporary applications of RNGs:

No Man's Game, 2022

https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2023/05/reality-engines.html

Random Instantiation Generator

Not sure where the obsession over random number generators (RNGs) came from, but here it is.

And let's start with this tangentially-related image, a working diagram of a slot machine taken from the book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll, 2012. 

It's a cool picture to look at, but what it means is quite diabolical, and in order to understand it, you will need to read the book, which should be required reading for any cold-blooded capitalist, or anyone who plays video games, or engages with social media, or even for people who go grocery shopping for **** sake, because you're getting played, and you should know how the game works. 

Back to the RNG's.

Using the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics to generate truly random numbers

Jan 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-unpredictable-nature-quantum-mechanics-random.html

Lasers, photons, beam splitters, and quantum magic. 

via: David Drahi et al. Certified Quantum Random Numbers from Untrusted Light, Physical Review X (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041048

Scientists develop laser system that generates random numbers at ultrafast speeds

Feb 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-scientists-laser-random-ultrafast.html

Light rays reflect and interact with each other within the cavity of an hourglass-shaped cavity to create random patterns, which can then create random numbers.

via Nanyang Technological University: "Massively parallel ultrafast random bit generation with a chip-scale laser," Science (2021). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6532/948

A device-independent protocol for more efficient random number generation

Mar 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-device-independent-protocol-efficient-random.html

Researchers are currently trying to integrate their device-independent random number generator into public randomness beacons that output random bits at periodic intervals.

But what would I want with a public randomness beacon? What would I do with all these RNGs? Just wait. 

via University of Colorado/NIST Boulder (CU/NIST Boulder) and the NTT Corporation in Japan:  Device-independent randomness expansion with entangled photons. Nature Physics(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-01153-4.

Post Script:

South Africa's lottery probed as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 drawn and 20 win

Dec 2020, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55154525

That's all.

Post Post Script:

On randomness and cheating -- I used to take air samples in office buildings for carbon dioxide, to see if your ventilation system was working properly (people exhale CO2, and an excess suggests the air in the room isn't being ventilated). Hundreds of times over, I would write down the location and the CO2 concentration. After a  long day, it got real hard to resist taking one measurement per office to get the basic idea and then writing random numbers for the rest of the space. 

But I remembered something from graduate school -- you can't create a random number set. No matter how hard you try. You're just not random enough. If you try to make up the numbers on your CO2 map, it will be less random than chance, and you can actually measure that in the number set. Your boss, or your client, might run your measurements and find that they aren't random enough, and discover that you're a scheister.