Lattice-based digital signature and discrete gaussian sampling

Lattice-based cryptography has generated considerable interest in the last two decades due toattractive features, including conjectured security against quantum attacks, strong securityguarantees from worst-case hardness assumptions and constructions of fully homomorphicencryption schemes. On the other hand, even though it is a crucial part of many lattice-basedschemes, Gaussian sampling is still lagging and continues to limit the effectiveness of this newcryptography. The first goal of this thesis is to improve the efficiency of Gaussian sampling forlattice-based hash-and-sign signature schemes. We propose a non-centered algorithm, with aflexible time-memory tradeoff, as fast as its centered variant for practicable size of precomputedtables. We also use the Rényi divergence to bound the precision requirement to the standarddouble precision. Our second objective is to construct Falcon, a new hash-and-sign signaturescheme, based on the theoretical framework of Gentry, Peikert and Vaikuntanathan for latticebasedsignatures. We instantiate that framework over NTRU lattices with a new trapdoor sampler

The Hamilton--Jacobi Theory and the Analogy between Classical and Quantum Mechanics

We review here some conventional as well as less conventional aspects of the time-independent and time-dependent Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) theory and of its connections with Quantum Mechanics. Less conventional aspects involve the HJ theory on the tangent bundle of a configuration manifold, the quantum HJ theory, HJ problems for general differential operators and the HJ problem for Lie groups.Comment: 42 pages, LaTeX with AIMS clas

On Freed-Witten anomaly and charge/flux quantization in string/F theory

String theory, with its richness of dynamical scenarios, represents a microscopic tool of utmost relevance to jointly describe all the fundamental forces of nature and simultaneously it involves a wide and fascinating spectrum of geometrical implications. Because of its nature, in many cases research in string theory cannot be carried through on a purely locally-based analysis, but it should often be supplemented with intrinsically global investigations and consistency checks. The mathematical apparatus needed for such a study, however, turns out to be usually much more sophisticated than the one which is su cient for eld theory-like computations, and, unfortunately, it is not always really familiar to the physics community. The arguments discussed in this thesis constitute manifest examples of this situation..

Quantum Field Theories, Isomonodromic Deformations and Matrix Models

Recent years have seen a proliferation of exact results in quantum field theories, owing mostly to supersymmetric localisation. Coupled with decades of study of dualities, this ensured the development of many novel nontrivial correspondences linking seemingly disparate parts of the mathematical landscape. Among these, the link between supersymmetric gauge theories with 8 supercharges and Painlev{\'e} equations, interpreted as the exact RG flow of their codimension 2 defects and passing through a correspondence with two-dimensional conformal field theory, was highly surprising. Similarly surprising was the realisation that three-dimensional matrix models coming from M-theory compute these solutions, and provide a non-perturbative completion of the topological string. Extending these two results is the focus of my work. After giving a review of the basics, hopefully useful to researchers in the field also for uses besides understanding the thesis, two parts based on published and unpublished results follow. The first is focused on giving Painlev{\'e}-type equations for general groups and linear quivers, and the second on matrix models