265,942 research outputs found
Software engineering for 'quantum advantage'
Software is a critical factor in the reliability of computer systems. While the development of hardware is assisted by mature science and engineering disciplines, software science is still in its infancy. This situation is likely to worsen in the future with quantum computer systems. Actually, if quantum computing is quickly coming of age, with potential groundbreaking impacts on many different fields, such benefits come at a price: quantum programming is hard and finding new quantum algorithms is far from straightforward. Thus, the need for suitable formal techniques in quantum software development is even bigger than in classical computation. A lack of reliable approaches to quantum computer programming will put at risk the expected quantum advantage of the new hardware. This position paper argues for the need for a proper quantum software engineering discipline benefiting from precise foundations and calculi, capable of supporting algorithm development and analysis.This work was supported by ERDF, through COMPETE 2020 Programme, and FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), the Portuguese funding agency, within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER030947
Hybrid quantum information processing
The development of quantum information processing has traditionally followed
two separate and not immediately connected lines of study. The main line has
focused on the implementation of quantum bit (qubit) based protocols whereas
the other line has been devoted to implementations based on high-dimensional
Gaussian states (such as coherent and squeezed states). The separation has been
driven by the experimental difficulty in interconnecting the standard
technologies of the two lines. However, in recent years, there has been a
significant experimental progress in refining and connecting the technologies
of the two fields which has resulted in the development and experimental
realization of numerous new hybrid protocols. In this Review, we summarize
these recent efforts on hybridizing the two types of schemes based on discrete
and continuous variables.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Quantum Information Processing and Relativistic Quantum Fields
It is shown that an ideal measurement of a one-particle wave packet state of
a relativistic quantum field in Minkowski spacetime enables superluminal
signalling. The result holds for a measurement that takes place over an
intervention region in spacetime whose extent in time in some frame is longer
than the light-crossing time of the packet in that frame. Moreover, these
results are shown to apply not only to ideal measurements but also to unitary
transformations that rotate two orthogonal one-particle states into each other.
In light of these observations, possible restrictions on the allowed types of
intervention are considered. A more physical approach to such questions is to
construct explicit models of the interventions as interactions between the
field and other quantum systems such as detectors. The prototypical
Unruh-DeWitt detector couples to the field operator itself and so most likely
respects relativistic causality. On the other hand, detector models which
couple to a finite set of frequencies of field modes are shown to lead to
superluminal signalling. Such detectors do, however, provide successful
phenomenological models of atom-qubits interacting with quantum fields in a
cavity but are valid only on time scales many orders of magnitude larger than
the light-crossing time of the cavity.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures. Improved abstract and discussion of 'ideal'
measurements. References to previous work adde
Introduction to Quantum Information Processing
As a result of the capabilities of quantum information, the science of
quantum information processing is now a prospering, interdisciplinary field
focused on better understanding the possibilities and limitations of the
underlying theory, on developing new applications of quantum information and on
physically realizing controllable quantum devices. The purpose of this primer
is to provide an elementary introduction to quantum information processing, and
then to briefly explain how we hope to exploit the advantages of quantum
information. These two sections can be read independently. For reference, we
have included a glossary of the main terms of quantum information.Comment: 48 pages, to appear in LA Science. Hyperlinked PDF at
http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~knill/qip/prhtml/prpdf.pdf, HTML at
http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~knill/qip/prhtm
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