I’ve said before that I think the so-called “cluster states” are one of the most remarkable recent breakthroughs in quantum computing. One entangled state plus localized measurements is enough to simulate any quantum system! Here’s a link to my journal club notes on the subject. They require a background in quantum mechanics, but should be very easy to read if you’re part of the quantum computing community.
Thanks to Debbie Leung for providing the small pdf file (it was originally 16 meg). I’m posting this in part because Debbie and Panos Aliferis posted a paper yesterday that references these notes.