Questions tagged [history]
Questions related to the history of quantum computers and quantum computing. Use this tag to ask questions about they history of an aspect of quantum computing (such as some concept or paradigm).
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Do Aharanov and Ta-Shma treat the entries of a sparse Hamiltonian as edges of a graph?
Background and history
The mid-90's to early 2000's work on Hamiltonian simulation saw some pretty rapid advances. Within two years of Shor's algorithm, Lloyd outlined how Trotterization can lead to ...
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Is Klein's inequality due to Klein?
You may be familiar with "Klein's inequality"; one form of it is
$$
-\operatorname{tr}(\rho \log \sigma) + \operatorname{tr}(\rho \log \rho) \ge 0,
$$
stating that relative entropy is ...
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What kind of program was Deutsch envisioning to test for the linearity of quantum mechanics?
I've recently been studying Deutsch's 1985 paper "Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer" (pdf here). In this he endorses the position that a naïve ...
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Were quantum computers conjectured to factor large numbers before Shor developed his algorithm?
Peter Shor has given wonderful accounts of the development of his algorithm, with a lot of detail on the activity in the field at around the early-mid 90's. He's been very free about emphasizing that ...
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Did Feyman cite Yuri Manin in his paper "Simulating Physics with Computers"?
In Feyman’s paper "Simulating Physics with Computers", did he cite Yuri Manin as the idea of a quantum automaton that used superposition and entanglement was mentioned in his book a year ...
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What are the 2022 Nobel Prize winning papers of Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger, and how do they fit into the timeline of QIS?
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for "experiments with entangled photons... pioneering quantum information science".
Presumably ...
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Are indistinguishable bosons and fermions computationally equivalent to distinguishable qubits?
From the middle-late decades of the last century, many researchers such as Bennett, Benoif, Deutsch, Feynman, Manin, Wiesner, among others, had some intuition that qubits are computationally more ...
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Why was Feynman hesitant about simulating fermions with a quantum computer?
Richard Feynman has a number of foundational publications from the early-mid 80's on quantum computing that I continue to read with awe and inspiration. As earlier discussed, the 1985 article "...
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Are ladder operators ever extensively used in any model of quantum computation?
Computer scientists and others who are interested in learning more about quantum computation might be exposed, or re-exposed, to various concepts and classes of matrices from linear algebra. For ...
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With only one qubit, where does the bomb tester get its improvement over what's achievable classically?
The Elitzur-Vaidman [EV] bomb tester, first described in 1993, is a wonderful "pre-Shor's algorithm" application of quantum information. The original paper is written in the language of ...
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Chronology of discovery of quantum phase estimation algorithm
I'm a bit confused about exactly when the phase estimation algorithm was discovered. The Wiki article, as well as various textbooks and papers, says that it was introduced in 1995 by Alexei Kitaev, ...
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How did Lov Grover think up his search algorithm? How might one have discovered it themselves?
There are two related but distinct parts to my question and I'm happy to hear perspectives on either:
Any historical details, testimonies, papers that shed insight into what Lov Grover was working on ...
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Wheeler's "information theoretic" derivation of quantum information
1980s. John Wheeler at the University of Texas would tell his students, “Give an information theoretic derivation of quantum theory!” Information theoretic is an adjective for Claude Shannon's ...
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Names of IBM Q backends
IBM Q backends have many different names, see for example this link. We have for example processors called Melbourne, Tokyo, Armonk etc.
I am curious where these names come from? For example, I know ...
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Why does quantum computing generally use matrix formulation of quantum mechanics rather than a continuous variable formulation?
Elements of Quantum Computing draws a distinction between "Wave Mechanics" and "Matrix Mechanics" (p. 38). I believe the reason we use a matrix formulation is that we are not ...
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What is a flying qubit?
DiVincenzo criteria for quantum communication mentions flying qubits:
a. The ability to interconvert stationary and flying qubits
b. The ability to faithfully transmit flying qubits between specified ...
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What does W stand for in the W entangled state?
For the $|W_3\rangle=\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}(|001\rangle+|010\rangle+|100\rangle)$, what does W stand for? Does it refer to an author name? Anyone knows a reference? Thanks
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Could the Hadamard gate have been constructed differently with similar characteristics?
Say we had a Hadamard-like gate with the -1 in the first entry instead of the last. Let's call it $H^1$.
$$H = \begin{bmatrix}1&1\\1&-1\end{bmatrix}$$
$$H^1 = \begin{bmatrix}-1&1\\1&...
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History of anyon theory, braidings and tensor categories
What was the first paper/who was the first person to phrase anyon theory in terms of tensor categories?
Going through Wilczek's book on fractional statistics, some of the reprinted papers anticipate ...
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Who discovered the phase kickback trick?
Was it David Deutsch? Can you say who was the first paper to mention the phase kickback trick?
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What is quantum computing vs. what is not quantum computing
That is to say,
what are some common or popular misconceptions about what constitutes quantum computing?
and
how are those things misconceptions?
It could help in explaining to frame this while ...
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Is quantum computing just pie in the sky?
I have a computer science degree. I work in IT, and have done so for many years. In that period "classical" computers have advanced by leaps and bounds. I now have a terabyte disk drive in my bedroom ...
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When was the first use of the word Entanglement?
Schrödinger wrote a letter to Einstein after the 1935 EPR paper, and in that letter Schrödinger used the German word "Verschränkung" which translates into "entanglement", but when was the word first ...
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Does Moore's law apply to quantum computing?
Plain and simple. Does Moore's law apply to quantum computing, or is it similar but with the numbers adjusted (ex. triples every 2 years). Also, if Moore's law doesn't apply, why do qubits change it?
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Why do we use the standard gate set that we do?
The typically used gate set for quantum computation is composed of the single qubits Cliffords (Paulis, H and S) and the controlled-NOT and/or controlled-Z.
To go beyond Clifford we like to have full ...
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Who built the first quantum computer using at least two qubits?
In my previous question I asked who invented a quantum computer using qubits.
As a follow-up to this question I want to ask who built the first quantum computer using at least two qubits.
During my ...
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Who first proposed the idea of quantum computing using qubits?
As I understand it, the field of quantum mechanics was started in the early 20th century when Max Planck solved the black-body radiation problem. But I don't know when the idea of computers using ...
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