Quantum mechanics can speed up a range of search applications over unsorted
data. For example imagine a phone directory containing N names arranged in
completely random order. To find someone's phone number with a probability of
50%, any classical algorithm (whether deterministic or probabilistic) will need
to access the database a minimum of O(N) times. Quantum mechanical systems can
be in a superposition of states and simultaneously examine multiple names. By
properly adjusting the phases of various operations, successful computations
reinforce each other while others interfere randomly. As a result, the desired
phone number can be obtained in only O(sqrt(N)) accesses to the database.Comment: Postscript, 4 pages. This is a modified version of the STOC paper
(quant-ph/9605043) and is modified to make it more comprehensible to
physicists. It appeared in Phys. Rev. Letters on July 14, 1997. (This paper
was originally put out on quant-ph on June 13, 1997, the present version has
some minor typographical changes
