Plenary paper: Quantum information: The next frontier

For a long time the conceptually challenging predictions of quantum physics for individual experiments have been the issue of such bizarre discussions as Schrödinger´s cat gedanken experiment. There, quantum superposition would imply the co-existence of the states of a live cat and a dead cat, quantum randomness would imply the fundamental unpredictability of the results of an observation of the cat´s real and factual properties, and entanglement means that the state of the cat, dead or alive, is entangled with the state of an radioactive atom. Interestingly these same concepts, randomness, superposition, and entanglement, have become cornerstone concepts in a new quantum information technology. The most important applications are quantum cryptography, quantum computation, and quantum teleportation. Quantum cryptography permits the encoding of confidential information in a way that its security against eavesdropping is guaranteed by the laws of physics. A quantum computer would be able to operate in a quantum superposition of many different states thus enabling exponential speedup for some problems. Quantum teleportation allows transferring directly the quantum state of an individual system onto a distant one thus providing an ideal way for quantum computers to communicate with each other.