Series: Mathematics Colloquium

Date: Thursday, January 15, 2004

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM

Place: 102 McAllister Building

Hosts: Nigel Higson, Yuri Zarhin

Refreshments: 3:15 - 4:00 PM, in 212 McAllister

Speaker: Alice Silverberg, Ohio State University

Title: 

  Some Applications of Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry to
  Cryptography

Abstract:  

  Public key cryptography is about 25 years old, and relies on number
  theory.  We will discuss Diffie-Hellman key exchange and ElGamal
  encryption, and some recent improvements on them.  We show how the
  rationality of certain algebraic tori can be used to give a deeper
  understanding of these improvements, and thereby give new
  cryptosystems with some advantages.