Georgia Tech: Course on Quantum Computing, Fall 1996
It has recently been discovered that computers using quantum effects
can perform in polynomial time tasks which are suspected to require
exponential time on computers not taking advantage of these effects
(including all existing technologies, as well as formal models such as
the Turing Machine, RAM, etc.). Most impressively, a quantum computer
can factor numbers in polynomial time. Much of modern cryptography,
including the most powerful commercially available systems, is based
on conjectures that factoring, or related number-theoretic problems,
require exponential time.
Whether quantum computation is practical is still an open question,
for it requires coherence phenomena more delicate than any yet
achieved.
This course introduces the literature on quantum computation and
discusses both the algorithmic and physical aspects. Students and
faculty in computer science, physics, and mathematics, as well as
other disciplines, are invited to participate.
Schedule: M W 11-12, Biology Building room 204
Listed as CS 8112B and Physics 8102A
Readings
- R. Feynman. ``Simulating Physics with Computers.''
International Journal of Theoretical Physics,
Vol. 21, nos. 6/7, 1982, pp. 467-488.
- D. Deutsch.``Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the
universal quantum computer.'' Proc. R. Soc. Lond.,
Vol. A400, 1985, pp. 97-117.
- C. H. Bennett and D. P. DiVincenzo.
"Progress toward Quantum Computation." Nature 20 Sept. 95.
- C. H. Bennett, E. Bernstein, G. Brassard and U. Vazirani.
"Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantum Computing".
- R. J. Hughes, D. F. V. James, E. H. Knill, R. Laflamme and
A. G. Petschek.
"Decoherence Bounds on Quantum Computation with Trapped Ions."
- D. R. Simon.
"On the Power of Quantum Computation."
- A. Steane,
"Quantum Error Correction."
- P. Shor,
"Polynomial-time algorithms for prime factorization and
discrete logarithms on a quantum computer." To appear in
SIAM Journal of Computing.
- A. Barenco, C. H. Bennett, R. Cleve, D. P. DiVincenzo, N. Margolus, P.
W. Shor, T. Sleator, J. Smolin, and H. Weinfurter.
"Elementary gates for quantum computation." Phys. Rev. A
52, pp. 3457-3467 (1995).
- A. R. Calderbank and P. W. Shor.
"Good quantum error-correcting codes exist."
- P. Shor,
"Fault-tolerant quantum computation." Proceedings of the
1996 Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.
- L. K. Grover.
"A fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search."
Proceedings of the 28th Annual Symposium on the Theory of
Computing (STOC) 1996, pages 212-219.
- D. Finkelstein,
"Space-Time Code."
The Physical Review, vol. 184 no. 5 1261-1271, 25 Aug. 1969.
- R. P. Feynman, Lectures on Computation. A. J. G. Hey and
R. W. Allen, editors. Addison-Wesley 1996.
Problem Set 1, handed out Oct 30. (Updates will be posted here.)