Quantum computing: Entanglement may not be necessary
December 5, 2008 By Miranda Marquit(PhysOrg.com) -- It is a truth universally acknowledged that quantum computing must have entanglement.
“Entanglement,” Andrew White tells PhysOrg.com, “is normally considered a non-negotiable part of quantum information processing. In fact, if you told me a couple of years ago that you could do quantum computing without entanglement, I would have been pretty skeptical – to say the least!”
White says that he first heard the idea of non-entanglement quantum computing from Carl Caves. “I was intrigued when Professor Caves, on sabbatical here in Australia from New Mexico, mentioned that there were sober predictions that entanglement wasn’t always necessary.”
White leads a team of young experimental scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Ben Lanyon, Marco Barbieri, Marcelo Almeida and White have been studying deterministic quantum computing with only one pure qubit (DQC1). “Entanglement is not the final story on what makes quantum information processing powerful,” White insists. The Australian team’s results can be found in Physical Review Letters: “Experimental Quantum Computing without Entanglement.”
“Normally, in order for quantum computing to work,” White explains, “we need to encode the information into quantum bits—qubits—which are in a noise-free pure state. It’s known that the entanglement between these is what makes standard quantum computing powerful.” He continues, “With a DQC1 scheme, you only have to have one pure qubit, and the rest can be noisy or mixed.” The idea behind quantum information processing using entanglement is that noiselessness has to be applied in order to provide a substantial advantage over classical computing. DQC1, though, could potentially offer a more efficient and less resource-intensive method of quantum computing, since entanglement would no longer be a necessity.
“For this demonstration,” White says, “we used the smallest possible example: a circuit with just two qubits, one pure and one mixed. We ran a phase-estimation algorithm as a small example, and found in every setting there was zero entanglement, but that most of the states couldn’t be described efficiently in a classical manner.”
White points out that this is suggestive that there are other possibilities, beyond entanglement, that contribute to the power provided by quantum information processing. “We’re still chewing through the implications,” he says.
“This is not a universal panacea,” White admits. “For some problems and algorithms you just need pure qubits and entanglement, problems such as Shor’s algorithm. However, there are applications and problems where the DQC1 method will work quite well, and will be more efficient than trying to get qubits that are all pure.”
With so many different architectures and schemes for quantum computing – all of them trying to create a system in which all the qubits are pure – it is rare to see a group looking to find applications for a quantum information system that makes allowances for impurity and the introduction of noise – insisting that entanglement is not necessary. “The fact is that certain classes of problems don’t need entanglement, and they don’t need all of the purity. In some cases, all that is needed is one pure qubit and the rest could be mixed. Really, with DQC1, you don’t have to work as hard as you think you do.”
We are starting to build more complicated algorithms to get an idea of where this could go. Regardless, the idea that entanglement may not be necessary for some types of quantum computing is big news.”
More information: B. P. Lanyon, M. Barbieri, M. P. Almeida, and A. G. White. “Experimental Quantum Computing without Entanglement.” Physical Review Letters (2008). Available online: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v101/e200501 .
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Kind of like a hologram how the entire image is encoded in a smaller piece. Instead of looking at the entire picture, you look at the small piece of derive the larger picture without knowing it first.
crazy r i
The real issue here is they are trying to describe a highly technical theoretical circuit in "laymans terms", and without equations or diagrams. Which basicly makes this entire article useless.
moi, aussi
B. P. Lanyon, M. Barbieri, M. P. Almeida, and A. G. White
Department of Physics and Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
(Received 15 August 2008; published 13 November 2008)
Deterministic quantum computation with one pure qubit (DQC1) is an efficient model of computation that uses highly mixed states. Unlike pure-state models, its power is not derived from the generation of a large amount of entanglement. Instead it has been proposed that other nonclassical correlations are responsible for the computational speedup, and that these can be captured by the quantum discord. In this Letter we implement DQC1 in an all-optical architecture, and experimentally observe the generated correlations. We find no entanglement, but large amounts of quantum discord%u2014except in three cases where an efficient classical simulation is always possible. Our results show that even fully separable, highly mixed, states can contain intrinsically quantum mechanical correlations and that these could offer a valuable resource for quantum information technologies.
"One day, one day we'll grasp the concept that there is in fact a deterministic process underlying the supposed mystical universe of quantum mechanics."
Why do you think that the reality of the universe should be so boring simple and predictable?
/Kim Michelsen
Or, in the words of Obi-Wan, Should we say that, "we would like to avoid any Imperial entanglements?"
Star Wars Groaner. Hah! Got yah.
Be prepared to have your sensibilities assaulted to some degree, depending on where your understanding of 'how the world really works' sits. Specifically, you'll be looking at his work (incidental reports-and for good reasons!)on dimensional vortexes found in organic matter. (inorganic as well? dig deep for that particular aspect)
I will warn that it will take some time(put in the effort to let the framework and connections build, that will let it slowly become clear) to get to the core of it as the framework and fleshing out of it will assault the sensibilities of some folks here, but some are intrepid enough explorers that they can go there.
Good luck to you. If you make it - Welcome to the next level.