The university announced Monday it is founding a new quantum physics institute that promises students the chance to do research that could “transform technology in the same way that the laser and the transistor did in the twentieth century,” according to those involved.

The research, which will be conducted in partnership with the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, will focus on quantum information, with an eye toward eventually developing super-fast quantum computers. This technology could provide a boon to national security efforts by solving vastly more complicated equations.

“Having a partnership with the university means that we have access to quality students,” said Carl J. Williams, a visiting scientist at NIST. “And we get to help train students in a field that will have increasing importance.”

With a $6 million annual budget, the institute will employ about 20 scientists working on what Williams termed the “weirder aspects” of quantum mechanics.

Scientists believe a quantum computer would be able to solve problems much more quickly than even the fastest computers today by taking advantage of the laws that govern particles on a quantum scale – laws that are, for lack of a better word, weird.

On an ordinary scale, one object cannot be in two diametrically opposed states – for example, a television cannot be both on and off at the same time. At the quantum level they can.

Instead of organizing data as a series of zeros and ones – on and off – like a normal computer, a quantum computer would be able to classify data points as both zero and one at the same time, said William Phillips, the 1997 Nobel laureate in physics and a professor at the university’s Institute for Physics Science and Technology.

He said this would allow a quantum computer to handle many more numbers at once.

Such a computer would have major implications for those looking to crack the codes that keep digital information secure.

The encryption that protects data such as credit card numbers used to make online purchases is not technically impossible to break. It operates on the assumption that the calculations necessary to do so would take an inconceivably long time for even the fastest super computers.

Quantum computers could speed up the process to a few minutes, Williams said.

The NSA, which did not respond to an inquiry, is charged with monitoring terrorist communications. The agency has played an active role in promoting research in quantum computing, according to the National Science Foundation, and provides grant money to a number of universities working in the field.

“Of course, [the NSA] is interested in that technology,” said Williams. “It has important national security implications.”

In addition to breaking codes, quantum information would also be able to make communications more secure than before.  

“While a quantum computer could in principle break codes,” said Bruce E. Kane, a senior scientist of the physics department, “quantum cryptography could make codes that are better than anything that is currently used.”

Kane was quick to warn, however, that the ability to do quantum computations is still a long way off and its applications beyond cryptography uncertain.

“There are some people who say there are relatively few things that quantum computers are going to be useful for,” he said. “And there are other people who say we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg.”

Kane compared the early state of the technology to a paper airplane if the goal was a space shuttle.

“We’re at the very early stage of trying to build something,” Williams said. “But a lot of progress is being made and I think most of us believe one day it will happen.”

Contact reporter Andrew Vanacore at vanacoredbk@gmail.com.