Introduction to Quantum Computing

An introduction to non-physicists.

Why is Quantum Computing? (The problem)

Polynomial Time vs Exponential Time

Get the feeling of Exponential power: A Tower to the Moon!

Distance from Earth to the Moon = 384,400 km Paper thinness = 0.5 mm How many folds do we need to make a tower to the moon?

0.5 * 10^-3 * 2^n = 384,400 * 10^3 n = log(7688*10^8) = 39.5 ~ 40

Hard problems (NP problems)

Traveling salesman problem (TSP)

Integer factorization problem

Parallel processing!

Motivation

Richard Feynmans observation that certain quantum mechanical effects cannot be simulated efciently on a computer led to speculation that computation in general could be done more efciently if it used these quantum effects.

This speculation proved justied when Peter Shor described a polynomial time quantum algorithm for factoring integers.

Additional interest in the subject has been created by the invention of quantum key distribution and, more recently, popular press accounts of experimental successes in quantum teleportation and the demonstration of a three-bit quantum computer.

Quantum computers enables exponential parallelism

In quantum systems, the computational space increases exponentially with the size of the system which enables exponential parallelism. This parallelism could lead to exponentially faster quantum algorithms than possible classically.

This means that quantum computers will be very effective at performing tasks -- like vision recognition, medical diagnosis, and other forms of articial intelligence processing -- that can depend on very complex pattern matching activities way beyond the capabilities of classical computers.

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics (QM also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena at microscopic scales, where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. Quantum mechanics departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic and subatomic length scales.

Quantum computers may use a quantum mechanics phenomena like the spin direction of a single atom to represent the state of a single unit of quantum information (qubit), or alternatively the spin direction of a single electron or the polarization orientation of a photon.

Due to laws of quantum mechanics, individual qubits can represent a value of "1", "0" or both numbers simultaneously. This is because the subatomic particles used as qubits can exist in more than one state -- or "superposition" -- at exactly the same point in time.

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it! -Niels Bohr

Qubit

A qubit or quantum bit is a unit of quantum informationthe quantum analogue of the classical bit. A qubit is a two-state quantummechanical system, such as the polarization of a single photon: here the two states are vertical polarization and horizontal polarization. In a classical system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other, but quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a superposition of both states at the same time, a property which is fundamental to quantum computing.

Quantum superposition

Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that holds that a physical systemsuch as an electronexists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states (or, conguration of its properties) simultaneously; but when measured or observed, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible congurations.

There is no good classical explanation of superpositions: a quantum bit representing 0 and 1 can neither be viewed as between 0 and 1 nor can it be viewed as a hidden unknown state that represents either 0 or 1 with a certain probability.

Multiple Qubits

A register of n qubits can be in a superposition of all 2^n possible values. The extra states that have no classical analog and lead to the exponential size of the quantum state space are the entangled states.

The input to a quantum computation can be put in a superposition state that encodes all possible input values. Performing the computation on this initial state will result in superposition of all of the corresponding output values. This process is known as quantum parallelism.

Measurement

While a quantum system can perform massive parallel computation, access to the results of the computation is restricted. Accessing the results is equivalent to making a measurement, which disturbs the quantum state.

Measuring the output states will randomly yield only one of the values in the superposition, and at the same time destroy all of the other results of the computation.

The process of directly observing a qubit will actually cause its state to "collapse" to one or other of its superpositions. In practice this means that, when data is read from a qubit, the result will be either a "1" or a "0".

This can be imagined as if we have a huge number of parallel threads, but we can only read the result of one parallel thread, and because measurement is probabilistic, we cannot even choose which one we get.

Challenges in Manufacturing Quantum Computers

The greatest problem for building quantum computers is decoherence, the distortion of the quantum state due to interaction with the environment. For some time it was feared that quantum computers could not be built because it would be impossible to isolate them sufciently from the external environment. The breakthrough came from the algorithmic rather than the physical side, through the invention of quantum error correction techniques.

The second drawback, which is related to the rst, is that manipulating atoms is difcult! Trying to force one atom to spin a certain way requires powerful yet precise magnetic forces to be applied to the atom so that it doesnt disturb the other atoms around it.

Finally, the last draw back is that you cannot directly measure the spin of the atom due to Heisenbergs uncertainty principle. As soon as a measurement is taken of the atom to determine its spin, the spin will change and may not be the correct answer!

Realization techniques

Ion Trap: In an ion trap quantum computer: a linear sequence of ions representing the qubits are conned by electric elds. Lasers are directed at individual ions to perform single bit quantum gates. NMR: The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) approach has the advantage that it will work at room temperature, and that NMR technology in general is already fairly advanced. Superconductors: Needs supercooling

Realization of quantum computers

 1995 - Christopher Monroe and David Wineland at NIST (Boulder, Colorado) experimentally realize the rst quantum logic gate the C-NOT gate with trapped ions, according to Cirac and Zoller's proposal. 1998 - A working 2-qubit NMR quantum computer used to solve Deutsch's problem was demonstrated by Jonathan A. Jones and Michele Mosca at Oxford University and shortly after by Isaac L. Chuang at IBM's Almaden Research Center together with coworkers at Stanford University and MIT. 1998 - First working 3-qubit NMR computer. 2000 - First working 5-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Technical University of Munich. 2000 - First execution of order nding (part of Shor's algorithm) at IBM's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University. 2000 - First working 7-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 2006 - First 12-qubit quantum computer benchmarked. 2007 - a Canadian company called D-Wave announced what it described as "the world's rst commercially viable quantum computer". This was based on a 16-qubit processor -- the Rainer R4.7 -- made from the rare metal niobium supercooled into a superconducting state. 2009 - Google collaborates with D-Wave Systems on image search technology using quantum computing.

 2011 - D-Wave launched a fully-commercial, 128-qubit quantum computer. Called the D-Wave One, this is described by the company as a "high performance computing system designed for industrial problems encountered by fortune 500 companies, government and academia". The D-Wave One's super-cooled 128-qubit processor is housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room. At launch, the D-Wave One cost $10 million. The rst D-Wave One was sold to US aerospace, security and military giant Lockheed Martin in May 2011. 2013 - D-Wave launched D-Wave Two system which is a superconducting 512-qubit processor chip housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room. The computational basis of 500 qubits, for example, would already be too large to be represented on a classical computer because it would require 2^500 complex values (2^501 bits) to be stored. (For comparison, a terabyte of digital information is only 2^40 bits.)

Mathematical Model

Qubit
A quantum bit, or qubit, is a unit vector in a two dimensional complex vector space for which a particular basis, denoted by {|0>, |1>}, has been xed. The orthonormal basis |0> and |1> may correspond to the vertical and horizontal polarizations of a photon respectively, or to the spin-up and spin-down states of an electron.

Superposition
For the purposes of quantum computation, the basis states |0> and |1> are taken to represent the classical bit values 0 and 1 respectively. Unlike classical bits however, qubits can be in a superposition of |0> and |1> such as a|0>+b| 1> where a and b are complex numbers such that |a|^2 + |b|^2 = 1.

Measurement
The measurement postulate of quantum mechanics states that any device measuring a 2dimensional system has an associated orthonormal basis with respect to which the quantum measurement takes place. Measurement of a state transforms the state into one of the measuring devices associated basis vectors. The probability that the state is measured as basis vector |u> is the square of the norm of the amplitude of the component of the original state in the direction of the basis vector |u>.

Measurement
If a superposition a|0>+b|1> is measured with respect to the basis {|0>, |1>}, the probability that the measured value is |0> is |a|^2 and the probability that the measured value is |1> is |b|^2. As measurement changes the state, one cannot measure the state of a qubit in two different bases. Furthermore, quantum states cannot be cloned so it is not possible to measure a qubit in two ways, even indirectly by, say, copying the qubit and measuring the copy in a different basis from the original.

Measurement is equivalent to projection onto the basis

<bra|ket> Dirac notation

The orthonormal basis {|0>, |1>} can be expressed as {(1, 0)T , (0, 1)T}. |0>, |1> are called kets (one is ket) Any complex linear combination of |0> and |1>, a|0> + b|1>, can be written (a, b)T .

<bra|ket> Dirac notation

<x| (bra-x) is the conjugate tanspose of |x> Combining <x| and |y> as in <x||y>, also written as <x|y>, denotes the inner product of the two vectors. For instance, since |0> is a unit vector we have <0|0> = 1 and since |0> and |1> are orthogonal we have <0|1> = 0. The overlap expression <|> is typically interpreted as the probability amplitude for the state to collapse into the state .

<bra|ket> Dirac notation

The notation |x><y| is the outer product of |x> and <y|. For example, |0><1| is the transformation that maps |1> to |0> and |0> to (0, 0)T.

Quantum Key Distribution

Quantum Key Distribution

Quantum Key Distribution

Entanglement

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when particles such as photons, electrons, or molecules interact and then become separated. Before the interaction each particle is described by its own quantum state. After the interaction the pair can still be described with a denite quantum state but each member of the pair must also be described relative to one another.

In classical physics, the possible states of a system of n particles, whose individual states can be described by a vector in a two dimensional vector space, form a vector space of 2n dimensions. However, in a quantum system the resulting state space is much larger; a system of n qubits has a state space of 2^n dimensions.

The state space for two qubits, each with basis {|0>, |1>}, has basis {|0> |0>, |0> |1>, |1> |0>, |1> |1>} which can be written more compactly as {|00>, |01>, |10>, |11>}.

The state |00>+|11> is an example of a quantum state that cannot be described in terms of the state of each of its components (qubits) separately. In other words, we cannot nd a1, a2, b1, b2 such that (a1|0> + b1|1>) (a2|0> + b2|1>) = |00> + |11>.

If the quantum state of a pair of particles is in a denite superposition, and that superposition cannot be factored out into the product of two states (one for each particle), then that pair is entangled.

When a measurement is made on one member of such a pair and the outcome is known (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair is at any subsequent time always found (when measured) to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin).

There is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may be separated by arbitrarily large distances. In the formalism of quantum theory, this effect of measurement happens instantaneously. Repeated experiments have veried that this works even when the measurements are performed more quickly than light could travel between the sites of measurement. Research into quantum entanglement was initiated by a 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen describing the EPR paradox.

EPR Paradox

Quantum Gates

a quantum gate (or quantum logic gate) is a basic quantum circuit operating on a small number of qubits. They are the building blocks of quantum circuits, like classical logic gates are for conventional digital circuits.

Unlike many classical logic gates, quantum logic gates are reversible. However, classical computing can be performed using only reversible gates. For example, the reversible Toffoli gate can implement all Boolean functions. This gate has a direct quantum equivalent, showing that quantum circuits can perform all operations performed by classical circuits.

Quantum logic gates are represented by unitary matrices. The most common quantum gates operate on spaces of one or two qubits, just like the common classical logic gates operate on one or two bits. This means that as matrices, quantum gates can be described by 2 2 or 4 4 unitary matrices.

Toffoli Gate

Swap Gate

CNOT Gate

Hadamard Gate (Generates a superposition of all 2^n possible states when applied on an n qubit)

Dense Coding

Teleportation

Quantum Algorithms

Quantum Algorithms
Quantum algorithms is formed of state encoding, a sequence of transformations and then a measurement. all classical algorithms can also be performed on a quantum computer. All problems which can be solved on a quantum computer can be solved on a classical computer. What makes quantum algorithms interesting is that they might be able to solve some problems faster than classical algorithms. The most well known algorithms are Shor's algorithm for factoring, and Grover's algorithm for searching an unstructured database or an unordered list.

Shor's Algorithm
On a quantum computer, to factor an integer N, Shor's algorithm runs in polynomial time (the time taken is polynomial in log N, which is the size of the input). Specically it takes time O((log N)^3), demonstrating that the integer factorization problem can be efciently solved on a quantum computer and is thus in the complexity class BQP. This is substantially faster than the most efcient known classical factoring algorithm, the general number eld sieve, which works in sub-exponential time about O(e^[1.9 (log N)1/3 (log log N)2/3]).

BQP (bounded error quantum polynomial time) What is the relationship between BQP and NP?

Quantum Algorithms
Grover's algorithm is a quantum algorithm for searching an unsorted database with N entries in O(N^1/2) time and using O(log N) storage space. Post-Quantum Cryptography algorithms! (Lattice-based cryptography, McEliece cryptosystem)

Conclusions
Quantum mechanics phenomena can be used in performing computations. Quantum computers enables exponential parallelism. Quit can be 0, 1, or in a superposition of both. Multiple qubits can be in entangled state encoding all possible values. Measuring a quit in a superposition state return only one possible state and destroy all other possibilities. Quantum computation has many applications in both communications And computations. The elements of the theory of quantum computation are already established. Quantum computers, gates, algorithms are ready to be implemented. Although the realization of real quantum computers faces some technical difculties, there is a huge amount of investment in this eld from market-leading companies, universities and governments. There are already existing commercial implementations. Within a few number of years, quantum computers may change the way we do computations. It is important to prepare yourself for this theory and techniques to be ready for the next wave of computers inshaa Allah.

Thank you