What are scientists inputting into a quantum computer and what are they getting out of it? I don’t understand what it’s ‘calculating’?
In: Mathematics
In the quantum world, there is a phenomenom called entanglement. Multiple particles can exist in every possible configuration at the same time, and the number of configurations grows exponentially with the number of particles. But when you look at them, you only see 1 random configuration. It’s as if nature has a giant spreadsheet off to the side somewhere that we never get to see.
That is the big idea behind quantum computing: Use nature itself as the computer.
The other phenomenon is interference. If you want to know the probability of seeing a set of particles in some configuration, you add up the probability of each possible path the particles took to get there. In quantum mechanics, probabilities can be negative. There might be paths with negative and positive probabilities and they cancel out, you never see the particles in that configuration. Or paths with positive probabilities that increase the likelihood of seeing that configuration.
This is why you get the “interference pattern” in the double-slit experiment.
What a quantum computer does is orchestrate an interference pattern that cancels out the probabilities of seeing wrong answers and amplifies the probability of seeing right answers.
Latest Answers