Quantum Computer Works Better Shut Off

waimate writes "A New Scientist article relates how its possible to get answers from a quantum computer even when your program isn't running." From the article: "With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works."

Comments

Re:Gee whiz

[radtea]

I'll admidt I really don't understand what the article is talking about,

Neither did whoever wrote the article.

It works like this:

1) Define some classical terms, like "running" and "actually"
2) Apply them incorrectly to quantum situations
3) ob. ????
4) Profit!

The components of the photon wavefunction that are "not actually running the program" become entangled with the components of the photon wavefunction that "are actully running the program", and therefore they carry information regarding the state of those components.

If we think about this in classical terms, where we incorrectly and falsely imagine that each component of the wavefunction represents a classical trajectory through the apparatus, we could incorrectly and falsely say that photons that have not followed classical trajectories through the part of the apparatus that does the quantum computation have not run the program.

But the clear contradiction of that statement makes the slippery bullshit marketing-speak of the article clear: of course a photon that has followed any classical trajectory whatsoever has not run the quantum program. And to claim that "a photon whose wavefunction is entangled with the program has not run the program" too obviously has the same epistemological and moral status as giving away "free" products that only require a "small" processing fee to claim.

One is motivated to ask, "Why doesn't entanglement with the program state count as 'really' running the program? What is this 'real' thing you keep talking about?" Admittedly, entangling things in this way is a different way of running the program, and is really rather clever, but to promote the results in this way is just attention-grabbing marketing, unworthy of the name of science.

This kind of abuse of language is similar to that of the "quantum teleportation" folks, whose deliberately misleading claims often make it sound like something other than the ontologically-problematic quantum state is being "teleported."