Baby Steps Toward Quantum Computers

Mz6 writes "In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon called entanglement, which Einstein derided as 'spooky action at a distance' before experiments showed it was real. Such 'quantum teleportation' of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light. Teleportation between atoms could someday lie at the heart of powerful quantum computers, which are probably at least a decade away from development. Researchers using lab techniques can create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other; if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle." Reader starannihilator adds: "Physics Web provides a good graphic summary of the phenomenon, as well as a good technical article."

Comments

Analogue vs Digital

[Nermal6693]

I think (although I'm not certain) I read somewhere that a quantum computer is like an analogue computer - where you're not restricted by 0 and 1. Is that correct?

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[spacecowboy420]

OK, maybe I'll sound like a jackass, but I gotta ask anyway. It seems to me that if you can reproduce entangled particles reliably, and you have, lets say two hosts, both with one half of the set of the entangled particles. If you were to manipulate the state of one set, and that immediately affects the state of the entangled partner on the other host, wouldn't that be the effectively TRUE wireless communication. One where the rate of communication is limited only by how fast you could read and process the set of particles that are local? Wouldn't that be as secure as it gets - media to intercept? Sure, there would need to be software to interface with the states based on the input from the hosts - but if you could do this, you could control the mars rover in realtime. Is this where this is headed, or am I confused?

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[wass]

Wow, 2 quantum computation articles on /. within two days.

I mentioned this yesterday as well, but for an idea of what qubits are you can take a look at my currently unfinished Java Quantum Computation applet. As of now one can only do single-qubit operations, but eventually I hope to have a demo of quantum teleportation (teleportation of a single qubit, or spinor, that is).

This applet will give you an idea of what qubits are. Essentially they're a 'spinor' which in quantum-mechanical terms is a 2-element discrete wavefunction. In lay terms, this just means a set of two complex numbers (properly normalized). They are also displayed in a more visible representation, called the 'Bloch Sphere'.

This applet will let you take any input qubit, and operate on it with 6 different single-qubit quantum gates, and see the resulting qubit.

Look at the two qubits represented on the Bloch sphere. The yellow vector represents the qubits. The red dot indicates a classical 'zero' and the blue dot indicates classical 'one'. In classical computing any bit can only point exactly to the red or blue dots. In quantum computation a qubit can point anywhere on that sphere.

[For the mathematically curious, a qubit is 2 complex numbers, which would be 4 independent parameters. However, the sum of the modulus squared of each complex number must be unity, so that constraint leaves only 3 free parameters. Secondly, the entire qubit can be multiplied by any arbitrary phase constant (e^i*gamma) which changes the spinor but not its relative values. Hence, there are only two parameters for each qubit that really matter, so it can be expressed in 2D, mapped nicely to the sphere.]

In classical computing there are only 2 single-bit gates - Not and Buffer (actually, I never formally studied computer science, so someone please correct me if this isn't true). 'not' flips the bit, 'buffer' keeps the bit unchanged. In quantum computing there are infinitely many single-bit gates, some of the common ones are demonstrated in the applet. Basically, these gates can control how relatively 'one' or 'zero' the bit is by the superposition, as well as change the relative phase.

Anyway, I should be adding in two-qubit operations soon (like the infamous controlled-not) and hopefully get to something worthwhile.

So this applet isn't very useful for actual simulation of quantum computation yet, but it will you give an idea of what qubits are and how they can be represented.

can someone qualified answer this question

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say 20 years from now I am on my quantum fandangle computer that does sub-atomic calculations, what happens when background radiation hits the processor and flips a few 1s and 0s?

i.e. will my computer crash when there is a solar flare?
will the new "heatsinks" be lead shields?
will we need to rotate the shield harmonics? (j/k)

please... inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Not quantum computing, but

[wwest4]

Because Alice can't know the state of the information she's sending. If she does, then the superposition collapses.

It's not intuitive, but the "collapse of the wave function" metaphor fits observation.

A method to break Quantum Encryption?

[SkiifGeek]

Okay, so this is probably incorrect, but it is a train of thought. With the state of quantum encryption being that if a third party observes the key in transit, it is apparent, and the key is useless, would this have a potential application to break this encryption.

Using this method, the duplicated particles could be observed, leaving the original particles in the encryption stream relatively unmolested. Yes, it would be impractical and the equipment needed would be very distinctive and difficult to hide, but it raises the possibility.