157,475 research outputs found
Machines, Logic and Quantum Physics
Though the truths of logic and pure mathematics are objective and independent
of any contingent facts or laws of nature, our knowledge of these truths
depends entirely on our knowledge of the laws of physics. Recent progress in
the quantum theory of computation has provided practical instances of this, and
forces us to abandon the classical view that computation, and hence
mathematical proof, are purely logical notions independent of that of
computation as a physical process. Henceforward, a proof must be regarded not
as an abstract object or process but as a physical process, a species of
computation, whose scope and reliability depend on our knowledge of the physics
of the computer concerned.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure
The Quantum Frontier
The success of the abstract model of computation, in terms of bits, logical
operations, programming language constructs, and the like, makes it easy to
forget that computation is a physical process. Our cherished notions of
computation and information are grounded in classical mechanics, but the
physics underlying our world is quantum. In the early 80s researchers began to
ask how computation would change if we adopted a quantum mechanical, instead of
a classical mechanical, view of computation. Slowly, a new picture of
computation arose, one that gave rise to a variety of faster algorithms, novel
cryptographic mechanisms, and alternative methods of communication. Small
quantum information processing devices have been built, and efforts are
underway to build larger ones. Even apart from the existence of these devices,
the quantum view on information processing has provided significant insight
into the nature of computation and information, and a deeper understanding of
the physics of our universe and its connections with computation.
We start by describing aspects of quantum mechanics that are at the heart of
a quantum view of information processing. We give our own idiosyncratic view of
a number of these topics in the hopes of correcting common misconceptions and
highlighting aspects that are often overlooked. A number of the phenomena
described were initially viewed as oddities of quantum mechanics. It was
quantum information processing, first quantum cryptography and then, more
dramatically, quantum computing, that turned the tables and showed that these
oddities could be put to practical effect. It is these application we describe
next. We conclude with a section describing some of the many questions left for
future work, especially the mysteries surrounding where the power of quantum
information ultimately comes from.Comment: Invited book chapter for Computation for Humanity - Information
Technology to Advance Society to be published by CRC Press. Concepts
clarified and style made more uniform in version 2. Many thanks to the
referees for their suggestions for improvement
Quantum Computing: Pro and Con
I assess the potential of quantum computation. Broad and important
applications must be found to justify construction of a quantum computer; I
review some of the known quantum algorithms and consider the prospects for
finding new ones. Quantum computers are notoriously susceptible to making
errors; I discuss recently developed fault-tolerant procedures that enable a
quantum computer with noisy gates to perform reliably. Quantum computing
hardware is still in its infancy; I comment on the specifications that should
be met by future hardware. Over the past few years, work on quantum computation
has erected a new classification of computational complexity, has generated
profound insights into the nature of decoherence, and has stimulated the
formulation of new techniques in high-precision experimental physics. A broad
interdisciplinary effort will be needed if quantum computers are to fulfill
their destiny as the world's fastest computing devices. (This paper is an
expanded version of remarks that were prepared for a panel discussion at the
ITP Conference on Quantum Coherence and Decoherence, 17 December 1996.)Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, submitted to Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. A, minor
correction
Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
Topological quantum computation has recently emerged as one of the most
exciting approaches to constructing a fault-tolerant quantum computer. The
proposal relies on the existence of topological states of matter whose
quasiparticle excitations are neither bosons nor fermions, but are particles
known as {\it Non-Abelian anyons}, meaning that they obey {\it non-Abelian
braiding statistics}. Quantum information is stored in states with multiple
quasiparticles, which have a topological degeneracy. The unitary gate
operations which are necessary for quantum computation are carried out by
braiding quasiparticles, and then measuring the multi-quasiparticle states. The
fault-tolerance of a topological quantum computer arises from the non-local
encoding of the states of the quasiparticles, which makes them immune to errors
caused by local perturbations. To date, the only such topological states
thought to have been found in nature are fractional quantum Hall states, most
prominently the \nu=5/2 state, although several other prospective candidates
have been proposed in systems as disparate as ultra-cold atoms in optical
lattices and thin film superconductors. In this review article, we describe
current research in this field, focusing on the general theoretical concepts of
non-Abelian statistics as it relates to topological quantum computation, on
understanding non-Abelian quantum Hall states, on proposed experiments to
detect non-Abelian anyons, and on proposed architectures for a topological
quantum computer. We address both the mathematical underpinnings of topological
quantum computation and the physics of the subject using the \nu=5/2 fractional
quantum Hall state as the archetype of a non-Abelian topological state enabling
fault-tolerant quantum computation.Comment: Final Accepted form for RM
A scalable architecture for quantum computation with molecular nanomagnets
A proposal for a magnetic quantum processor that consists of individual
molecular spins coupled to superconducting coplanar resonators and transmission
lines is carefully examined. We derive a simple magnetic quantum
electrodynamics Hamiltonian to describe the underlying physics. It is shown
that these hybrid devices can perform arbitrary operations on each spin qubit
and induce tunable interactions between any pair of them. The combination of
these two operations ensures that the processor can perform universal quantum
computations. The feasibility of this proposal is critically discussed using
the results of realistic calculations, based on parameters of existing devices
and molecular qubits. These results show that the proposal is feasible,
provided that molecules with sufficiently long coherence times can be developed
and accurately integrated into specific areas of the device. This architecture
has an enormous potential for scaling up quantum computation thanks to the
microscopic nature of the individual constituents, the molecules, and the
possibility of using their internal spin degrees of freedom.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
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