Something I hear people discuss quite frequently is the question \u201cWhat\u2019s the big result of the last year or two in field X?\u201d<\/p>\n
My current answer to this question, in the field of quantum information science, is Raussendorf and Briegel\u2019s cluster-state model<\/a> of quantum computation.<\/p>\n This model tells you that, in order to quantum compute, it suffices to prepare a single quantum state (the \u201ccluster state\u201d), and then do local (i.e., single-qubit) measurements on that state.<\/p>\n Such measurements suffice to write in the initial state of the computation, the dynamical operations performed, and to read out the results of the computation!<\/p>\n In Debbie Leung\u2019s memorable metaphor (memorable if you\u2019re a Unix nut, anyway!), you simply \u201cping\u201d Nature, and she computes. No “dynamics”, in the usual sense of the word, just ask questions of a suitably correlated state! Those questions don’t even have to be nonlocal; all the nonlocality is carried in a single, universal state.<\/p>\n Whatsmore, if you believe the Church-Turing-Deutsch thesis, you can efficiently simulate an arbitrary physical system this way.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve spent most of the last two months thinking about this model, and the better I understand it, the more interesting and beautiful it seems.<\/p>\n (Disclaimer:<\/em> I guess I should say that I’ve got a bit of a personal interest in advertising this work, since I’ve done some related work.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Something I hear people discuss quite frequently is the question \u201cWhat\u2019s the big result of the last year or two in field X?\u201d My current answer to this question, in the field of quantum information science, is Raussendorf and Briegel\u2019s cluster-state model of quantum computation. This model tells you that, in order to quantum compute,… Continue reading Cluster-state quantum computing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}