NONE 20260716062509740 wseas/wseas content-registration-form@crossref.org content-registration-form International Journal on Applied Physics and Engineering 2945-0489 Victoria Mellor School of Computing, Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Technology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK Quantum key distribution (QKD) and postquantum cryptographic systems rely on physical properties for security guarantees. However, the weaponization of quantum phenomena by adversaries necessitates a comprehensive theoretical framework grounding attack surfaces in fundamental physics. We present a unified framework integrating Bose-Einstein statistics, Schrödinger wave mechanics, Heisenberg uncertainty relations, Noether’s symmetry theorem, Jackson’s semiconductor physics, and Dirac’s quantum field formalism to characterize, predict, and detect physical-layer attacks on quantum cryptographic systems. This framework reveals that all attacks manifest as violations of fundamental symmetries, enabling comprehensive detection through conserved quantity monitoring. I demonstrate how material constraints defined by semiconductor physics bound the parameter space of exploits, while Noether’s theorem provides the mathematical foundation for complete attack attribution. The synthesis yields both theoretical attack bounds and practical detection methodologies, validated against documented quantum cryptanalyses including detector blinding, photon-number splitting, decoherence engineering, and spectral separation attacks. 07 16 2026 07 16 2026 20 3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US 10.37394/232030.2026.5.3 https://wseas.com/journals/ape/2026/a08ape-003(2026).pdf C. H. Bennett and G. Brassard, “Quantum cryptography: Public key distribution and coin tossing,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Computers, Systems and Signal Processing, 1984, pp. 175–179. A. K. 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