A Technical Seminar on Quantum Computers By SAIKIRAN PANJALA
- 2. A quantum computer is a machine that performs calculations based on the laws of quantum mechanics, which is the behavior of particles at the sub-atomic level. A quantum computer can efficiently simulate any realistic model of computation. In a quantum computer, one "qubit" - quantum bit - could be both 0 and 1 at the same time. So with three qubits of data, a quantum computer could store all eight combinations of 0 and 1 simultaneously. That means a three-qubit quantum computer could calculate eight times faster than a three-bit digital computer. If we built this quantum computer it would revoltionize human society.
- 3. Civilization has advanced as people discovered new ways of exploiting various physical resources such as materials, forces and energies. The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes of physical realization - from gears to relays to valves to transistors to integrated circuits and so on. Today's advanced lithographic techniques can squeeze fraction of micron wide logic gates and wires onto the surface of silicon chips.
- 4. A Quantum Computer is a computer that harnesses the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. It has the potential to perform certain calculations billions of times faster than any silicon-based computer.
- 5. In the classical model of a computer, the most fundamental building block - the bit, can only exist in one of two distinct states, a '0' or a '1'. In a quantum computer the rules are changed. Not only can a qubit, exist in the classical '0' and '1' states, but it can also be in a superposition of both! In this coherent state, the bit exists as a '0' and a '1' in a particular manner.
- 6. ANALYSIS Quantum computers are advantageous in the way they encode a bit, the fundamental unit of information. A number - 0 or 1, specifies the state of a bit in a classical digital computer. An n-bit binary word in a typical computer is accordingly described by a string of n zeros and ones. A qubit might be represented by an atom in one of two different states, which can also be denoted as 0 or 1.
- 7. The current challenge is not to build a full quantum computer right away but rather to move from the experiments in which we merely observe quantum phenomena to experiments in which we can control these phenomena. This is a first step towards quantum logic gates and simple quantum networks.
- 8. Quantum computers could one day replace silicon chips, just like the transistor once replaced the vacuum tube. But for now, the technology required to develop such a quantum computer is beyond our reach. Most research in quantum computing is still very theoretical. The most advanced quantum computers have not gone beyond manipulating more than 7 qubits, meaning that they are still at the "1 + 1" stage. However, the potential remains that quantum computers one day could perform, quickly and easily, calculations that are incredibly time- consuming on conventional computers
- 9. Consider first a classical computer that operates on a three-bit register. The state of the computer at any time is a probability distribution over the 23 = 8 different three-bit strings 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111. If it is a deterministic computer, then it is in exactly one of these states with probability 1. However, if it is a probabilistic computer, then there is a possibility of it being in any one of a number of different states. We can describe this probabilistic state by eight nonnegative numbers a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h.
- 10. The state of a three-qubit quantum computer is similarly described by an eight-dimensional vector called a ket. However, instead of adding to one, the sum of the squares of the coefficient magnitudes, | a | 2 + | b | 2 + ... + | h | 2, must equal one. Moreover, the coefficients are complex numbers. Since states are represented by complex wave functions, two states being added together will undergo interference, which is a key difference between quantum computing and probabilistic classical computing
- 11. While a classical three-bit state and a quantum three-qubit state are both eight- dimensional vectors, they are manipulated quite differently for classical or quantum computation. For computing in either case, the system must be initialized, for example into the all-zeros string, , corresponding to the vector (1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0). In classical randomized computation, the system evolves according to the application of stochastic matrices, which preserve that the probabilities add up to one.
- 12. Integer factorization is believed to be computationally infeasible with an ordinary computer for large integers if they are the product of few prime numbers.By comparison, a quantum computer could efficiently solve this problem using Shor's algorithm to find its factors. This ability would allow a quantum computer to decrypt many of the cryptographic systems in use today, in the sense that there would be a polynomial time algorithm for solving the problem. In particular, most of the popular public key ciphers are based on the difficulty of factoring integers, including forms of RSA. These are used to protect secure Web pages, Encrypted email, and many other types of data.
- 13. There are a number of quantum computing candidates among those: Superconductor-based quantum computers Trapped ion quantum computer Optical lattices Topological quantum computer
- 14. The class of problems that can be efficiently solved by quantum computers is called BQP, for "bounded error, quantum, polynomial time".Quantum computers only run probabilistic algorithms, so BQP on quantum computers is the counterpart of BPP on classical computers.It is defined solvable with a polynomial-time algorithm, whose probability of error is bounded away from one half.A quantum computer is said to "solve" a problem if, for every instance,its answer will be right with high probability.If that solution runs in polynomial time,then that problem is in BQP.
- 15. Quantum Cryptography Quantum Communication Artificial Intelligence
- 16. Although the future of quantum computing looks promising, we have only just taken our first steps to actually realizing a quantum computer.There are many hurdles,which need to be overcome before we can begin to appreciate the benefits they may deliver. Researchers around the world are racing to be the first to achieve a practical system, a task,which some scientists think, is futile.