Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Talk by Lee Spector, Hampshire College

Strange Bits: Quantum Computing and the Search for New Quantum Algorithms
Tuesday, Jan 30 2007
8:00 pm in Science Center 199

Abstract

Quantum mechanics may provide the next major leap in computer power, allowing us to produce "quantum computers" that do things beyond the capabilities of even the fastest possible conventional computers. But the power of quantum computing is still poorly understood, emerging as it does from bizarre and counterintuitive features of the microscopic world. For example, quantum computers must be carefully isolated from their environments lest they be observed in action, which would destroy their results. Even more strangely, quantum calculations that are not performed can have as much impact on the overall result of a computation as those that are. In this talk I will present one view of the fundamental source of this new computational power, and I will also describe ways in which software technologies based on Darwinian processes of random variation and selection can be used to automatically discover new quantum computing algorithms.

Sponsored by SIGMA XI, The Scientific Research Society