Jax RCFB Copyright © 1988-2010 Jack J. Woehr

Quantum Computing

• Sites
• Urdokumenten
  
• Basic Information
• Other Reading
• More Helpful Links
• Experiments
• Thoughts

Sites

• Quantiki the Quantum Computing Wiki
• Quantum Computing Blog on Dr. Dobb's CodeTalk
• Qubit -- the University of Oxford Centre for Quantum Computation

Urdokumenten

• Schroedinger: "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics" (1935)
  • English translation of the paper in which appeared Schroedinger's Cat
• Einstein, A., Podolsky, B., and Rosen, N., 1935: "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?"
  • Einstein &al. balk at the quantum mechanical description.
• Bell, J.S.: "On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox"
  • This is the "Bell's Theorem" paper, in which was first stated one of "Bell's Inequalities".
• Shor, Peter W., 1995: "Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and Discrete Logarithms on a Quantum Computer"
  • "Shor's Algorithm"

Basic Information

• 5-1/2 Examples in Quantum Mechanics
• A Brief History of Quantum Computing
• Bell's Theorem in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (excellent!)
• Bell's Theorem -- yet another exposition
• Bibliography of Quantum Cryptography
• ScienceDaily Magazine: Dead Times Between Photons
• Quantum Computing and Shor's Algorithm (Matthew Hayward)
• Quantum Field Theory (Mark Srednicki) <== wow
  
• Quantum Physics Preprint Server
• Shor, I'll Do It is Scott Aaronson's attempt to explain Shor's Algorithm to the layman
• How Do You Measure the Spin of an Electron?
• Univ. of St. Andrews Scotland MacTutor History of Mathematics
• U. of Winnipeg: Physics 1501 - Modern Technology
• Wikipedia on Quantum Computation is an incredibly well-written and detailed tree of knowledge on this subject.
  

Quantum Computing Languages

• Quantum Circuit Viewer qasm2circ
  
• Quantum Programming Languages Survey and Bibliography
• LanQ
• QCL
• QML

Other Reading

• Vectors by E. H. Leaton, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1968, Lib. of Cong. 67-30966
• Tensor Calculus and Relativity by Derek F. Lawden, Chapman and Hall, London, 1975, ISBN 0-412-20370-7

Some other books which Internet acquaintance Albert Martinez (albertem@bellatlantic.net) recommends:

• A few interesting articles:
  • http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991016/timeless.html
  • http://www.sciam.com/explorations/122297teleport/index.html
  • http://www.qubit.org/intros/crypt.html

More helpful links

• Claude Crépeau maintains a nice bibliography of quantum computing papers.
• Computational Physics, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
• D-Wave Systems is a commercial enterprise actually trying to construct quantum computing devices based on magnetic resonance.
  • The D-Wave Systems site is rather interesting, they've already got their sleeves rolled up and are playing with some neat hardware.
• Elementary Gates for Quantum Computing
• Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology
  
• IBM Introduction to Quantum Computing
• JPL
  • JPL Quantum Sciences and Technology Group
  • JPL Quantum Computing Technologies
• Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Canada
  
• kForth is a Forth programming language interpreter whose author uses it for QM experiments, source online.
• Laboratoire d'Informatique Théorique et Quantique (Université de Montreal)
• Matthew Hayward's quantum algorithms page
• MIT Quanta Research Group "develops tools and technologies for quantum computation".
  
• Bill Pezzaglia's Home Page has some of his great math papers with application to quantum theory.
• Quantum Computing Energy Limitations is an article speculating about energy requirements for accurate quantum computing. Quantum Informatics and the Thomas B. Thriges Center for KvanteInformatik, University of Aarhus, Danmark
• Brian Patterson's Quantum Gates Page
  
• Stanford University News
  • An interesting use of single photons to form a data stream to allow quantum detection of data interception
• Virtual Journal of Quantum Information is a zine on the topic at hand.
• xQIT, the W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at MIT

Experiments

Thoughts

[T]he mystery of quantum mechanics is of a very different kind from the mystery of, say, why the fine structure constant is 1/137. The QM mystery is not just "why are the equations that way and not some other way" --- but rather --- what do the equations mean? What is a measurement? What does consciousness have to do with measurement? Why do we measure anything at all?

There is a big fuzzy hole at the center of QM, and the fundamental question of why we observe collapse to the particular set of observables we observe (and not, for example, a set of superpositions of those observables) --- that's a really big question. NOTHING in the mathematics makes this clear whatsoever.

Presumably, quantum mechanics is describing physical systems, and presumably we, the physicists, are also physical systems. So what is the relationship between us and these systems that we observe? What is so special about an "observer" that they have the power to "observe" and thereby force a "collapse" of a quantum system?

Or, to put it another way, how is it that we can make the observations necessary to even determine the fine structure constant is 1/137?

Jax Home Page