Introduction

Behold the computer. The greatest, ultimate invention across multiple eras. The grand culmination of brilliant work by the greatest thinkers, scientists, engineers and inventors of the past century. How far have we come from the difference engine of Charles Babbage; to the first computer that occupied a whole room; to the multi-core, powerful compact computers on the shelves today. Very far indeed, right? Wrong! The high-speed, modern computer that sits in front of you is fundamentally no different than Babbage's difference engine of nearly 200 years ago. The first computer used binary and the most modern computer today uses binary. All we have done in classical computer development is make them more compact and increase the number of transistors on a processor chip. Processing is still done using bits. A bit is still represented by 1s and 0s as it was centuries ago. The classical computer, as the name implies, is classical. Step to a new breed of computing, one that differs radically from the very essence of computers and binary as we know it. Evolved breedsbehold the quantum computer. A dynamic new fascinating field that is being pioneered as you read these words. Forget bits, binary and logic gates. Welcome to the world of Qubits, Quantum Gates and Quantum circuits & algorithms. Welcome to Quantum Computing!

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Besides the Pronunciation of Quantum

Quantum Computer, sounds good. But besides this pronunciation, there is a lot of questions arise relating to this. Those are, Why this computer is named so? What is this Quantum Computer? What is the difference between quantum computer and classical computer?

So the first question is why this computer named so? This computer is named so because it uses a new kind technology named Quantum Technology.

So the next question may arise that, what is this quantum technology? Quantum technology is a new field of physics and engineering, which transitions some of the stranger features of quantum mechanics into practical applications.

So what is this Quantum Mechanics? Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of the dual particle-like behavior and interaction of matter and energy

Now this statement leads to another question that, what is matter and what is energy? In physics matter is refer to the physical objects which has a mass and occupies a volume. In physics, energy is a quantity that is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems.

Now let us move to our next question that is, what is this Quantum Computer? A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena (Quantum Technology), such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Now this important answer also leads to a question that what is superposition? In physics superposition is a property of quantum mechanics, which defines that any linear combination of solutions to a particular equation will also be a solution of it.
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Now move to our nest question, that is what should be the difference between classical computer and quantum computer? . A bit is the basic unit of information in a digital computer. From a physical point of view, a bit is a physical system which can be ; spared in one of the two different states representing two logical values - no or yes, false or true, or simply 0 or 1. But the basic unit of information in a quantum computer is quantum bit or qubit. Qubit has a quaternary nature. Quantum mechanics laws are completely different from the laws of a classical physics (used in classical computers). A qubit can exist not only in the states corresponding to the logical values 0 or 1 as in the case of a classical bit, but also in a superposition state(simultaneously zero and one).

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A Brief History of Quantum Computing.

Feynman was the first who producing an abstract model in 1982 that showed how a quantum system could be used to do computations. He also explained how such a machine would be able to act as a simulator for quantum physics. In 1985 David Deutsch proposed the first universal quantum Turing machine and paved the way to the quantum circuit model. Progress in quantum algorithms began in the 1990s, with the discovery of the Deutsch-Josza oracle (1992) and of Simon's oracle (1994). The latter supplied the basis for Shor's algorithm for factoring. Published in 1994, this algorithm marked a phase transition in the development of quantum computing and sparked a tremendous interest even outside the physics community In 1995, Peter Shor and Andrew Steane proposed (independently) the first scheme for quantum error-correction. In that same year the first realization of a quantum logic gate was done in Boulder, Colorado, following Cirac and Zoller's proposal. In 1996, Lov Grover from Bell Labs invented the quantum search algorithm which yields a quadratic speed-up compared to its classical counterpart. A year later the first NMR model for quantum computation was proposed, based on nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. This technique was realized in 1998 with a 2-qubit register, and was scaled up to 7 qubits in the Los Alamos National Lab in 2000.

The need for quantum computer

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Three things in life are certain - death, taxes, and mans unquenchable thirst for computing power. The power of computers today depend upon the number of transistors on a chip. The more transistors, generally the more powerful the computer. Moore's Law states: The number of transistors on a microprocessor continues to double every 18 months. This means that by the year 2015 we will find that transistors on a chip will become so small that they will be measured on an atomic scale. As you discovered, quantum mechanics apply to the atomic world and the next logical step will be to create quantum computers, which will harness the power of atoms and molecules in computing. Quantum computers will be able to perform millions of calculations at the same time, whereas todays conventional computers only perform one. According to Chuang a supercomputer needs about a month to find a phone number from the database consisting of world's phone books, where a quantum computer is able to solve this task in 27 minutes

The basis of quantum computer.

The classical computer (non-quantum), like the PC or laptop that sits in front of you, uses the language of computers called binary. Binary is a base 2 mathematical language because it only consists of two digits. These are 1s and 0s. This is the fundamental unit of information or building block called the bit(?). A bit, in classical computers, is either a 1 or 0. In quantum computing the fundamental unit of information is a qubit (quantum bit). Qubits form the basis of quantum computing. Perfect, but what makes a qubit different from a classical bit. Lets look at the following example to demonstrate the radical contrast between the two. In a classical computer, lets say we have two bits. These two bits could consist of one of the following combinations: 00 or 01 or 10 or 11. In quantum computing, two qubits can also consist of one those four abovementioned combinations which are called computational basic states. Now, here is the crux of quantum computing. While a classical pair of bits can store these numbers only one at a time, a pair of qubits can also exist in a superposition (?)of these four basis states or an intermediate (between 0 and 1). What this means is that a pair of qubits can simultaneously consist of all four possible states or combinations (00, 01, 10, 11). Thus, qubits can contain an extremely vast amount of information (in fact, in theory, an infinite amount of information) and this results in quantum computers being exponentially more powerful than classical computers (non-quantum). This unique property of a quibit (to be able to exist in a superposition of states) arises because of quantum computers following the laws of quantum mechanics, while a classical bit follows the understood laws of classical physics.

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Determining the state of quantum computer

In a classical computer we can read out the state of all the bits in the computer at any time. The following 3 bits is in a definite state of 101, and can be read one-zero-one in a classical computer. Due to the property of superposition of a qubit in a quantum computer; it is impossible to determine the exact state of the computer. This means, we cannot determine exactly which superposition state a qubit is in because of their ability to switch from one state to another. Rather, we can only obtain partial information about the state of the computer. This makes it extremely difficult to build a quantum computer because we cannot determine the exact state at any time. Therefore control measures to control the state of qubits must be created, which are called control devices.

Qubit control devices

Qubits are made up of quantum particles which are: photons, atoms, electrons and ions. These particles need to be controlled in order to create a qubit which cages these particles. Control devices trap these particles and then switch their state. There are four control
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devices that can be used to create qubits : ion traps, quantum dots, semiconductor impurities, and superconducting circuits.

ION TRAPS
Ion traps use magnetic fields to trap ions. At this moment in time, researchers have managed to entangle as many as six ions in a single ion trap. As ion trap technology becomes more established, the number of ions trapped will grow.

QUANTUM DOTS
Quantum dots are bits of semiconductor material that contain one or a few electrons. Quantum dots are loaded with electrons, and they can be integrated into electronic devices. The most advanced prototypes today work only at extremely low temperatures.

SEMICONDUCTOR IMPURITIES
It is difficult to make a pure computer chip. Some atoms embedded in these chips are commonly found as impurities (or flaws). There is usually an unwanted atom of some kind in every few billion atoms. Qubits include unwanted electrons of atoms intentionally into the semiconductor materials. The state of these electrons can then be controlled using lasers or electric fields.

SUPERCONDUCTING CIRCUITS
Superconducting circuits are simply electrical circuits which are made of superconducting material. This means that electrons can flow with almost no resistance at extremely low temperatures. Superconducting circuits can form qubits by the flow of current. The current can be made to flow in both directions at once (simultaneously) in the quantum state of superposition. The worlds first commercial quantum computer, the Orion, uses superconducting circuits. The advantage is that they use millions of electrons instead of controlling individual particles. Superconducting circuits have to work at extremely low temperatures.

Quantum gates
introduction

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We have seen the enormous superiority that qubits have over bits. This means nothing though, if we dont have a way of manipulating the information in qubits. To manipulate information in a qubit, quantum gates are used.

How quantum gates work

A quantum gate works similar to a classical logic gate. Classical logic gates take bits as input; evaluate and process the input and produce new bits as output. In the example below (refer to diagram CLG), the logic gate takes in 0101 as input, which goes through the gate and an output of 10 is produced.

Quantum logic gates also emulate this, but remember quantum gates take in qubits which can exist in a state of superposition. This opens up a whole new dimension of possible solutions and outputs. In the example below (refer to diagram QLG), the quantum gate takes in 010 (a basis computational state), and would you say it should output? Another basic computational state? No! Instead, and extraordinarily so, it outputs a wave function representing a superposition state. Magic ! This is the weirdness of the quantum world, where things dont behave how we expect them to. Fortunately, this weirdness can be exploited to achieve greater processing power, and that is the main advantage of quantum gates (and quantum computer in general).

Reversibility
Another property of quantum gates it that they are reversible unlike many classical logic gates. This means that the outputs can be converted back into the original input. Why is necessary? In order to preserve the quantum state. In order for the gates to be reversible, the number of outputs must be the same as the number of inputs.

The power of quantum computing

The power and capabilities of quantum computing threatens to rock the very foundations of the information age. These capabilities can be used in various fields and can have astounding effects. Referring to the advancement of quantum computing in the Technologies: The
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Future of the Global Information Society report in 2002, Christopher Altman said: An omni-linked world populated with intelligent artifacts will bring sweeping changes to virtually every facet of modern life from science and education to industry and commerce leaving no segment of society unaffected by its advance. As you can ascertain from the quote, all facets of life will change dramatically with the advance of quantum computing such as science, chemistry and even the security that protects our personal information.

Science & Chemistry

Food, materials, cloths, fuels and every substance in our lives are created using science and chemistry. Numerous advances have been made in chemistry over the past few decades which is due to computer being able to model the structure of complex molecules. Lets say we want to model the structure of a molecule of a certain type of medicine. In order to model a molecule, the computer has to solve the Schrodinger Equation (SE). This equation, when solved, provides us with the description of matter at the quantum mechanics level (microscopic level). Using this description, the computer can then model the structure of the molecule. The problem is that the equation doubles in difficulty for every electron in the molecule. This means that conventional computers can only model molecules with no more than 30 electrons, anything more and even the high-end supercomputers of today choke. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are capable of solving the SE much faster and with less hardware. With a quantum computer the difficulty increases by a very small margin with each electron. This means that even very basic quantum computers will be able to outperform supercomputers in simulating molecules, nature and virtually anything. This will result in massive, exponential advances in the field of science and chemistry, and will affect all facets of life, because thousands of more complex molecules and substances will be created every day. In fact the successful application of quantum computers to science and chemistry can save the world!

Encryption and security

In the age where buying, banking and almost anything can be done online; security and encryption is imperative. RSA is the most secure encryption that is used today, because even the most advanced supercomputers cannot crack the system. Why? Because in order to break the RSA encryption is reduced to factoring extremely large numbers (300 digit), which even the fastest computers and supercomputers today choke when attempting. In fact it would take hundreds of years to find the factors of a 300 digit integer using the worlds fastest supercomputer, yet by using Shors Algorithm on a quantum computer the RSA would be cracked in a heartbeat and rendered obsolete. This is one example of the massive leap in power that quantum computing provides.

Quantum Algorithm
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The power of quantum computing could only be harnessed if an algorithm could exploit the potential of it. An algorithm is simply a program that is designed for the purpose of solving a certain problem. Without algorithms, we would have no computer (classical or quantum), because there would have been no motivation to build a computer if it could not solve any problems. Similarly nobody wanted to build a quantum computer because there were no algorithms. In 1994 everything changed when Peter Shor, a Bell Labs scientist, wrote an algorithm which would factor large numbers on a quantum computer. This discovery would change the world forever; as engineers and scientists stepped into the potent world of quantum computing. Since then, there have been great advances in the writing of quantum algorithms which are now armed with astonishing sophistication. The latest being able to manipulate 16 qubits, which is the worlds first commercial quantum computer, the Orion by DWave Systems.

How quantum computer can save the world?

Unsolvable Problems (NP type)
Nondeterministic polynomial (NP) problems are considered the most difficult problems on earth to solve. With current computers most NP type problems are virtually unsolvable. This is because when a new variable is added, another dimension to the possible solutions is
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opened. Every value in the problem must be calculated, compared to and then an optimal solution can be found. Conventional computers almost never achieve optimal results, because they are not fast or accurate enough. Quantum computers, are once again vastly superior , because they can evaluate all possible solutions simultaneously (because of superposition) and then find the optimal solution. The solution is found a lot quicker and is more accurate, than classical computers. NP problems are everywhere from database searching to patternmatching to medicine. If all these NP type problems could be solved, life on earth would be thousands of years ahead and extremely more advanced. Quantum computers can, and a paradox may it be, solve unsolvable problems which will define the future of our world

Saving the world (and changing it)

Imagine if every NP type problem on earth could be solved? Well, stop imagining because its just around the corner, when quantum computers will do just this. Just think of the possibilities! Molecules containing hundreds or thousands, even millions of electrons will be able to be modeled by solving the Schrodinger Equation (SE) using quantum computing. This could mean that a cure for AIDS could be found in seconds! Medicine will leap ahead like never before, and hence millions of lives will be saved. Even more importantly, greener fuels and alternate energy sources can be discovered and the current global warming problem we are facing could be rectified in an instant. Our dependency of oil will end or on the other hand quantum computing may enable us to synthetically reproduce commodities like gold, diamonds and oil. It can bring to an end the countless wars being fought over oil and other sources of wealth. Eventually the very fundamental equations of nature will be solved. More astonishingly and maybe even frighteningly, quantum computers will be able to simulate nature so accurately that virtual reality and the real world will become undistinguishable. In summary, quantum computing has the potential and is very likely to save the world from imploding, and also making it a better, cleaner, safer place.

The Orion quantum computer

The first commercial quantum computer in the world has been made by D Wave Systems Inc. The quantum computer is call the Orion. It is made up of 16 qubits which is the most ever for a quantum computer. The Orion was built using a superconducting metal called niobium. In order for qubits to maintain their quantum state, they must be cooled. Therefore, the Orion is supercooled to almost absolute zero.

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The biggest advantage of the Orion is the ability it has to solve NP problems in just a few cycles. The classical computer takes thousands of cycles and gives less accurate solutions. When the Orion was demonstrated in Mountain View (Silicon valley) in 2007, it solved a Sudoku puzzle in seconds!

The Potential of Quantum Computer

In a traditional computer, information is encoded in a series of bits, and these bits are manipulated via Boolean logic gates arranged in succession to produce an end result. Similarly, a quantum computer manipulates qubits by executing a series of quantum gates, each a unitary transformation acting on a single qubit or pair of qubits. In applying these gates in succession, a quantum computer can perform a complicated unitary transformation to a set of qubits in some initial state. The qubits can then be measured, with this
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measurement serving as the final computational result. This similarity in calculation between a classical and quantum computer affords that in theory, a classical computer can accurately simulate a quantum computer. In other words, a classical computer would be able to do anything a quantum computer can. So why bother with quantum computers? Although a classical computer can theoretically simulate a quantum computer, it is incredibly inefficient, so much so that a classical computer is effectively incapable of performing many tasks that a quantum computer could perform with ease. The simulation of a quantum computer on a classical one is a computationally hard problem because the correlations among quantum bits are qualitatively different from correlations among classical bits, as first explained by John Bell. Take for example a system of only a few hundred qubits, this exists in a Hilbert space of dimension ~1090 that in simulation would require a classical computer to work with exponentially large matrices (to perform calculations on each individual state, which is also represented as a matrix), meaning it would take an exponentially longer time than even a primitive quantum computer.

Richard Feynman was among the first to recognize the potential in quantum superposition for solving such problems much much faster. For example, a system of 500 qubits, which is impossible to simulate classically, represents a quantum superposition of as many as 2500 states. Each state would be classically equivalent to a single list of 500 1's and 0's. Any quantum operation on that system --a particular pulse of radio waves, for instance, whose action might be to execute a controlled-NOT operation on the 100th and 101st qubits-- would simultaneously operate on all 2500 states. Hence with one fell swoop, one tick of the computer clock, a quantum operation could compute not just on one machine state, as serial computers do, but on 2500 machine states at once! Eventually, however, observing the system would cause it to collapse into a single quantum state corresponding to a single answer, a single list of 500 1's and 0's, as dictated by the measurement axiom of quantum mechanics. The reason this is an exciting result is because this answer, derived from the massive quantum parallelism achieved through superposition, is the equivalent of performing the same operation on a classical super computer with ~10150 separate processors (which is of course impossible)!!

Early investigators in this field were naturally excited by the potential of such immense computing power, and soon after realizing its potential, the hunt was on to find something interesting for a quantum computer to do. Peter Shor, a research and computer scientist at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, provided such an application by devising the first quantum computer algorithm. Shor's algorithm harnesses the power of quantum superposition to rapidly factor very large numbers (on the order ~10200 digits and greater) in a matter of seconds. The premier application of a quantum computer capable of
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implementing this algorithm lies in the field of encryption, where one common (and best) encryption code, known as RSA, relies heavily on the difficulty of factoring very large composite numbers into their primes. A computer which can do this easily is naturally of great interest to numerous government agencies that use RSA -- previously considered to be "uncrackable" -- and anyone interested in electronic and financial privacy.

Encryption, however, is only one application of a quantum computer. In addition, Shor has put together a toolbox of mathematical operations that can only be performed on a quantum computer, many of which he used in his factorization algorithm. Furthermore, Feynman asserted that a quantum computer could function as a kind of simulator for quantum physics, potentially opening the doors to many discoveries in the field. Currently the power and capability of a quantum computer is primarily theoretical speculation; the advent of the first fully functional quantum computer will undoubtedly bring many new and exciting applications.

Quantum Error Correction

Quantum error correction is used in quantum computing to protect quantum information from errors due to decoherence and other quantum noise. Quantum error correction is essential if one is to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computation that can deal not only with noise on stored quantum information, but also with faulty quantum gates, faulty quantum preparation, and faulty measurements.

Classical error correction employs redundancy. The simplest way is to store the information multiple times, andif these copies are later found to disagreejust take a majority vote;
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e.g. Suppose we copy a bit three times. Suppose further that a noisy error corrupts the threebit state so that one bit is equal to zero but the other two are equal to one. We also assume that noisy errors are independent and occur with some probability p. It is most likely that the error is a single-bit error and the transmitted message is three ones. It is possible that a double-bit error occurs and the transmitted message is equal to three zeros, but this outcome is less likely than the above outcome.

Copying quantum information is not possible due to the no-cloning theorem. This theorem seems to present an obstacle to formulating a theory of quantum error correction. But it is possible to spread the information of one qubit onto a highly-entangled state of several (physical) qubits. Peter Shor first discovered this method of formulating a quantum error correcting code by storing the information of one qubit onto a highly-entangled state of nine qubits. A quantum error correcting code protects quantum information against errors of a limited form.

Classical error correcting codes use a syndrome measurement to diagnose which error corrupts an encoded state. We then reverse an error by applying a corrective operation based on the syndrome. Quantum error correction also employs syndrome measurements. We perform a multi-qubit measurement that does not disturb the quantum information in the encoded state but retrieves information about the error. A syndrome measurement can determine whether a qubit has been corrupted, and if so, which one. What is more, the outcome of this operation (the syndrome) tells us not only which physical qubit was affected, but also, in which of several possible ways it was affected. The latter is counter-intuitive at first sight: Since noise is arbitrary, how can the effect of noise be one of only few distinct possibilities? In most codes, the effect is either a bit flip, or a sign (of the phase) flip, or both (corresponding to the Pauli matrices X, Z, and Y). The reason is that the measurement of the syndrome has the projective effect of a quantum measurement. So even if the error due to the noise was arbitrary, it can be expressed as a superposition of basis operationsthe error basis (which is here given by the Pauli matrices and the identity). The syndrome measurement "forces" the qubit to "decide" for a certain specific "Pauli error" to "have happened", and the syndrome tells us which, so that we can let the same Pauli operator act again on the corrupted qubit to revert the effect of the error.

The syndrome measurement tells us as much as possible about the error that has happened, but nothing at all about the value that is stored in the logical qubitas otherwise the measurement would destroy any quantum superposition of this logical qubit with other qubits in the quantum computer.
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Strange things about quantum computer

On the theory side, quantum mechanics delves deep into areas that are nearly unthinkable. For instance, it's possible that a quantum computer holds an infinite number of right answers for an infinite number of parallel universes. It just happens to give you the right answer for the universe you happen to be in at the time. "It takes a great deal of courage to accept these things," says Charles Bennett of IBM, one of the best known quantum computing scientists. "If you do, you have to believe in a lot of other strange things(Manay, 1998).

Conclusion
Will scalable quantum computers ever be built? Yes. Will quantum computers eventually replace desktop computers? No. Quantum computers will always be harder to build and maintain than classical computers, so they will not be used for the many tasks that classical computers do equally efficiently. Quantum computers will be useful for a number of specialized tasks. The extent of these tasks is still being explored. With classical computers gradually approaching their limit, the quantum computer promises to deliver a new level of computational power. With them comes a whole new theory of computation that incorporates the strange effects of quantum mechanics and considers every physical object to be some kind of quantum computer.
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References:
Daniel, G. (1999). Quantum Codeshttp://qso.lanl.gov/~gottesma/QECC.html Error-Correcting

Manay, K. (1998). Quantum computers could be a billion times faster than Pentium III. USA Today. http://www.amd1.com/quantum_computers.html Quantum http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r10/bombay/news4/Quantum_Computers.htm Quantum Computers & Moore's Law. http://www.qubyte.com Quantum Computers: What are They and What Do They http://www.carolla.com/quantum/QuantumComputers.htm Mean to Us? Computers.

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West, J (2000). Quantum Computers. California Institute of Technology, educational website: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-intro.html#qc

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