Seminar on 'Physics of Quantum Computation', by Boris Altshuler

Abstract:
Development of devices for quantum computation is now extremely popular field, which is generously supported by both industry and government agencies and enjoys tremendous progress. However a clear understanding of advantages of the quantum information processing as compared to classical ones is far from being achieved.

A classical computer consists of a large number  of bits – systems that have two possible states, e.g. 0 and 1. Each state of a classical computer is fully characterized by the states of all its bits – sequences of numbers 0 and 1 usually called bit-strings. The number of the possible bit-strings, can be enormously big. Among the most interesting for the practical applications are optimization problems, which can be reduced to a search for a minimum of some particular function of bit-strings. It is likely although not proven that classical computer needs exponentially long time to solve such problems. The most desirable would be to develop a quantum computer able to accelerate solution of optimization problems as compared to the best classical algorithms.

Quantum states of a system of qubits are linear combinations of different bit-strings. Accordingly the amount of information contained in a given quantum state increases exponentially with N. In order to understand how to control the quantum states of a system of qubits one can use methods developed in the physics of many-body systems, in particular, the theory of Many-Body Anderson Localization. 

The talk will be devoted to discussion of such analysis and its possible quantum algorithms that it suggests.

Start time: 11:00
Address: 21/4 Staraya Basmannaya, bld.5, room Б-807
Working language: English
If you need a pass to HSE, please contact iavanesova@hse.ru