Quantum Computation for

DummiesUW students
Dan Simon
Microsoft Research
The Strong Church-Turing Thesis
Church-Turing Thesis: Any physically
realizable computing machine can be
modeled by a Turing Machine (TM)
A statement about the physical world
Strong Church-Turing Thesis: Any
physically realizable computing machine can
be modeled by a polynomial-time
probabilistic TM (PPTM)
A physical/economic statement of sorts
 Consequences of the Thesis
Some problems just cannot be efficiently
solved by real, physical computing machines
Suspected example: NP-complete problems
NP: Class of problems with polynomial-time
checkable solutions
NP-complete problems: If these are efficiently
solvable, then all NP problems are
Many practical examples, esp. in optimization; e.g., TSP
 Challenges to the Thesis
Moores Law: Fageddaboudit
Its just a matter of time.
Parallelism: Only a polynomial factor
Like speed, it eventually hits a wall
Analog: Precision is the catch
Precision is (eventually) as costly as speed
Chaos: Ditto
 Enter Quantum Mechanics

You have nothing to do but mention the

quantum theory, and people will take
your voice for the voice of science, and
believe anything.

--George Bernard Shaw, Geneva (1938)

 History
Benioff(1981):Quantumsystemscan
simulateTM
Feynman(1982):Cantheydomore?It
appearspossible....
Deutsch(1985):FormalizedQuantumTM
(QTM)model,constructedan(inefficient)
universalQTM(UQTM)

BQP A BPP A
 More History
Deutsch&Jozsa(1992):exponentialoracle
separationofP(deterministiconly)andQP
promiseproblemoracle
Bernstein&Vazirani,Yao(1993):
efficientUQTM
EquivalenceofquantumcircuitsandQTMs
SuperpolynomialoracleseparationofBPP
(probabilisticP)andBQP
 The Breakthroughs
Shor(1994):integerfactoring,discretelog
inBQP
n
Grover(1995):GeneralSearchintime
Classical Probabilistic Coin flips

H
H T
1/2 1/2
H T H T
1/4 1/4 1/4 1/4
 Probability vs. Amplitude
Classical probability is a 1-norm
The probability of an event is just the sum of the
probabilities of the paths leading to it
All the probabilities (for all events) must sum to 1
In the quantum world, it becomes a 2-norm
Each path has an amplitude
The amplitude of an event is the sum of the amplitudes of
the paths leading to it
Probability = |Amplitude|2 (for each event)
All the probabilities (for all events) must (still) sum to 1
 Interference
Amplitudes can be negative (even complex!)
and still preserve positive probability
Different paths can thus cancel (negatively
interfere with) or reinforce (positively
interfere with) each other
Paths are therefore no longer independent
we must consider the entire parallel collection
(superposition) of paths at any given point
 Quantum Coin Flips
H
H T
1/ 2 1/ 2
H T H T
1/2 1/2 1/2 -1/2

=1 =0
 Another Consequence of Amplitude
Probabilistic processes (e.g., computation) can be
represented by Markov chains (stochastic
matrices--to preserve 1-norm)
Quantum processes are represented by unitary
matrices (M-1 = M*) to preserve 2-norm
Unitary matrices have unitary inverses
hence quantum processes are always reversible
fortunately, that doesnt exclude classical computing
 Stochastic vs. Unitary
Stochastic: 1 / 2 1 / 2
Rows, columns, sum to 1 1 / 2 1 / 2
(1-norm)

Unitary:
Squared magnitudes in rows, 1/ 2 1/ 2
columns sum to 1 (2-norm)
Inverse = Conjugate Transpose 1/ 2 1/ 2
(also unitary)
 Reversible Computation
A function is reversibly computable if each step can
be computed from the one before it or from the one
after it
Any computable function can be made reversibly
computable (at a constant factor cost) if the input is
preserved (i.e., the output on input x is (x,f(x)))
Use reversible gates (e.g., Toffoli gates)
Preserve work at each step, then recompute to clean
up
 Exploiting Quantum Effects
Idea: when searching for needle in haystack
...Just follow all paths by flipping quantum
coins, and make the dead ends disappear with
negative interference!
The catch: you must preserve unitarity
e.g., use Toffoli gates for all your classical
computation, to make it reversible
.but what else can you do?
 A Simple Trick
H
H Tag T Tag

1/ 2 1/ 2
H Tag T Tag H Tag T Tag

1/2 1/2 1/2 -1/2

 Coherence
An event can specify the states of multiple
objects (coin + tag, multiple coins)
Multiple paths interfere only if they lead to
exactly the same event
Objects must stay coherent for this to work
Superposition must be maintained
In particular, observation destroys coherence
That still permits, e.g., (reversible) computation
 A Simple Trick (2)
H
H Tag T Tag

1/ 2 1/ 2
H Tag T Tag H Tag T Tag

1/2 1/2 1/2 -1/2

 A Slightly Less Simple Trick
0

0 Tag ... ... ... n-1 Tag

0 Tag ... n-1 Tag ... 0 Tag ... n-1 Tag

2i [...] 2i [...] 2i [...] 2i [...]

e e e e
Tag ...
 Shors Algorithm for Dummies
Events with the same tag interfere negatively
(i.e., cancel) unless their value complements
the periodicity of the tags
Seeing such complementing event values
reveals the tags (possibly unknown) period
Which corresponds to the order of an
element in the multiplicative group mod n
Thats enough information to factor n
 Limitations
The Church-Turing thesis is unaffected (QM is
computable--in PSPACE, even)
Some indication that NP may not be in BQP
Algorithm would have to be non-relativizing
Known methods havent (yet) extended to some
natural, ostensibly similar problems
Graph isomorphism
Lattice problems
 Obstacles
Getting those funny amplitudes just right
Precision on the quantum scale is required
Keeping them just right
Error correcting codes needed ([Shor et al.])
Preventing decoherence
Manipulation and coherence are at cross-purposes
Computing mechanisms themselves may
encourage decoherence
 Implementation?
Various proposals
particle spins, energy states to represent bits
Best so far: NMR-based implementation of
Grovers search on 4-item database
Unlikely to scale well
Unknown if any implementation can scale
well
Practical limits of coherence are still a mystery