Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse THE QUEST FOR THE QUANTUM COMPUTER

by Brown, Julian

• ISBN13: 9780743242639
• ISBN10: 0743242637
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-05
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

The imminent arrival of the quantum computer, millions of times faster than today's computers, promises to launch a scientific gold rush of the new millennium. After consulting with both the computer's debunkers and the leading minds behind the breakthrough, Brown explains the quantum computer's development thus far.

Author Biography

Julian Brown specializes in physics and computing as a science journalist. New Science Magazine has featured his work prominently, and he has produced science specials for BBC and BBC World Service. He teamed up with Paul Davies to edit The Ghost in the Atom and Superstrings: A Theory of Everything.

Table of Contents

Foreword	13	(4)
David Deutsch
Late-Night Quantum Thoughts	17	(23)
Life in Other Universes	17	(4)
The Quantum AI Experiment	21	(3)
Exploring Hilbert Space	24	(4)
The End of Moore's Law?	28	(4)
From Bill Gates to Quantum Gates	32	(5)
The Hunter-Gatherers Take a Quantum Leap	37	(3)
God, the Universe, and the Reversible Computer	40	(43)
The Computer That Just Coasts	40	(2)
Shannon's Information Theory	42	(3)
The Puzzle of Maxwell's Demon	45	(4)
Much Ado About kT	49	(1)
Landauer's Principle	50	(3)
The Reversible Computer	53	(4)
Reversibility and the Laws of Physics	57	(1)
Is the Universe a Computer?	58	(3)
The Fredkin Gate	61	(3)
The Billiard Ball Computer	64	(7)
The God Game	71	(6)
Low-Energy Computing	77	(6)
The Logic of the Quantum Conspiracy	83	(35)
Feynman's U-Turn	83	(2)
Journey Into the Quantum Realm	85	(6)
Strange Correlations	91	(3)
The EPR Puzzle	94	(6)
Designer Hamiltonians	100	(4)
A Matter of Interpretation	104	(5)
The Case for Many Universes	109	(3)
The Universal Quantum Computer	112	(1)
The Turning Principle	113	(5)
Quantum Parallelism	118	(29)
The New Paradigm	118	(3)
The Meaning of Superposition	121	(1)
Counting on the Qubits	122	(3)
The Square Root of NOT	125	(3)
Rotations in Quantum Space	128	(3)
Controlled-NOT and the Toffoli Gate	131	(4)
Playing the Markets with a Quantum Computer	135	(2)
Turbocharged Algorithms	137	(1)
Tractability vs. Intractability	138	(2)
The Traveling Salesman Problem	140	(1)
Does P Equal NP?	141	(3)
Consulting the Oracle	144	(3)
Code Breaking and the Shor Algorithm	147	(42)
The Problem of Factorization	147	(2)
Secret Codes	149	(3)
Public-Key Cryptography	152	(2)
How Diffie-Hellman Works	154	(2)
The RSA Alogrithm	156	(2)
How RSA Works	158	(2)
Cryptography and the Real World	160	(4)
The Challenge of RSA-129	164	(3)
Factoring by E-Mail	167	(3)
Factorization Takes a Quantum Leap	170	(2)
Heat, Sound, and Fourier Series	172	(3)
Light, Music, and Fourier Transforms	175	(5)
The Quantum FFT	180	(9)
Privacy Lost, Privacy Regained	189	(40)
Messages from Across the Quantum Channel	189	(5)
All About Eve	194	(3)
Dial Q for Qubits	197	(5)
Quantum Clones and Counterfeit Coins	202	(2)
How to Send a Quantum Valentine	204	(4)
The Rise and Fall of Quantum Bit Commitment	208	(5)
Cryptography by Entanglement	213	(5)
Quantum Compression	218	(4)
Beam Me Up, Atom by Atom	222	(7)
How to Build a Quantum Computer	229	(39)
Going Universal	229	(3)
Two-Bit Processors	232	(3)
The Polymer Machine	235	(2)
The Trouble with Decoherence	237	(3)
Trapping the Atom	240	(8)
Flying Qubits	248	(4)
The Doctors of Spin	252	(7)
How Useful Is NMR Quantum Computation?	259	(3)
Connecting the Quantum Dots	262	(4)
Runners in the Quantum Race	266	(2)
Quantum Error Correction and Other Algorithms	268	(33)
Processing in the Dark	268	(3)
Democracy Among the Qubits	271	(3)
Three-Bit Quantum Error Correction	274	(4)
How Does Quantum Error Correction Scale?	278	(2)
Crossing the Error Threshold	280	(2)
Creating the GHZ State	282	(6)
Take a Ride on the Universal Quantum Simulator	288	(3)
Searching a Quantum Phone Directory	291	(4)
Amadeus and the Quantum Complexity Puzzle	295	(2)
The Shape of Quantum Circuits to Come	297	(4)
Visions of the Quantum Age	301	(46)
A Quantum Computing Road Map	301	(3)
Nanotechnology and the Singularity	304	(6)
DNA Computing	310	(5)
Clones, Consciousness, and the Indivisible Soul	315	(3)
Quantum Gravity and the Measurement Problem	318	(2)
Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?	320	(5)
Why Is the Universe Comprehensible?	325	(2)
Trading Histories for Universes	327	(3)
Are Decoherent Histories the Answer?	330	(2)
The Quantum Universe and the Omega Point	332	(15)
Appendix A	347	(1)
Appendix B	347	(1)
Appendix C	348	(1)
Appendix D	349	(6)
Appendix E	355	(1)
Appendix F	356	(1)
Appendix G	356	(1)
Appendix H	357	(2)
Notes	359	(14)
Bibliography	373	(2)
Index	375