Is there a physically universal cellular automaton or Hamiltonian?

It is known that both quantum and classical cellular automata (CA) exist that are computationally universal in the sense that they can simulate, after appropriate initialization, any quantum or classical computation, respectively. Here we introduce a different notion of universality: a CA is called physically universal if every transformation on any finite region can be (approximately) implemented by the autonomous time evolution of the system after the complement of the region has been initialized in an appropriate way. We pose the question of whether physically universal CAs exist. Such CAs would provide a model of the world where the boundary between a physical system and its controller can be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut for the quantum measurement problem. We propose to study the thermodynamic cost of computation and control within such a model because implementing a cyclic process on a microsystem may require a non-cyclic process for its controller, whereas implementing a cyclic process on system and controller may require the implementation of a non-cyclic process on a "meta"-controller, and so on. Physically universal CAs avoid this infinite hierarchy of controllers and the cost of implementing cycles on a subsystem can be described by mixing properties of the CA dynamics. We define a physical prior on the CA configurations by applying the dynamics to an initial state where half of the CA is in the maximum entropy state and half of it is in the all-zero state (thus reflecting the fact that life requires non-equilibrium states like the boundary between a hold and a cold reservoir). As opposed to Solomonoff's prior, our prior does not only account for the Kolmogorov complexity but also for the cost of isolating the system during the state preparation if the preparation process is not robust.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur

Entanglement generation via scattering of two particles with hard-core repulsion

We analyse the entanglement generation in a one dimensional scattering process. The two colliding particles have a Gaussian wave function and interact by hard--core repulsion.In our analysis results on the entanglement of two mode Gaussian states are used. The produced entanglement depends in a non-obvious way on the parameters ratio of masses and initial widths. The asymptotic wavefunction of the two particles and its associated ellipse yield additional geometric insight into these conditions. The difference to the quantitative analysis of the amount of entanglement generated by beam splitters with squeezed light is discussed.Comment: 2 figure

Ergodic quantum computing

We propose a (theoretical ;-) model for quantum computation where the result can be read out from the time average of the Hamiltonian dynamics of a 2-dimensional crystal on a cylinder. The Hamiltonian is a spatially local interaction among Wigner-Seitz cells containing 6 qubits. The quantum circuit that is simulated is specified by the initialization of program qubits. As in Margolus' Hamiltonian cellular automaton (implementing classical circuits), a propagating wave in a clock register controls asynchronously the application of the gates. However, in our approach all required initializations are basis states. After a while the synchronizing wave is essentially spread around the whole crystal. The circuit is designed such that the result is available with probability about 1/4 despite of the completely undefined computation step. This model reduces quantum computing to preparing basis states for some qubits, waiting, and measuring in the computational basis. Even though it may be unlikely to find our specific Hamiltonian in real solids, it is possible that also more natural interactions allow ergodic quantum computing.Comment: latex, 25 pages, 10 figures (colored