A physically cryptographic hoteling observer for nuclear warhead verification

Abstract

When verifying the authenticity for nuclear warheads dismantlement toward a treaty partner's obligation, nuclear arms verification technologies are critical since only nuclear disarmament treaties are not sufficient to neutralize the existential threat of nuclear weapons. In this work, we present a verification method combining a numerical observer model and physical encryption techniques. The performance of the method is quantified by Monte Carlo simulations with several typical deception scenarios. Simulation results show this method can efficiently complete identification tasks in the presence of noise (<5 %) and source-term variability, meanwhile exhibiting high security against brute-force attacks which reconstruct detection data by the exhaustive method.