Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse THE QUEST

The imminent arrival of the quantum computer, millions of times faster than today's computers, promises to launch a scientific gold rush of the new millennium. After consulting with both the computer's debunkers and the leading minds behind the breakthrough, Brown explains the quantum computer's development thus far.

Julian Brown specializes in physics and computing as a science journalist. New Science Magazine has featured his work prominently, and he has produced science specials for BBC and BBC World Service. He teamed up with Paul Davies to edit The Ghost in the Atom and Superstrings: A Theory of Everything.

Foreword

13

(4)

David Deutsch

Late-Night Quantum Thoughts

17

(23)

Life in Other Universes

17

(4)

The Quantum AI Experiment

21

(3)

Exploring Hilbert Space

24

(4)

The End of Moore's Law?

28

(4)

From Bill Gates to Quantum Gates

32

(5)

The Hunter-Gatherers Take a Quantum Leap

37

(3)

God, the Universe, and the Reversible Computer

40

(43)

The Computer That Just Coasts

40

(2)

Shannon's Information Theory

42

(3)

The Puzzle of Maxwell's Demon

45

(4)

Much Ado About kT

49

(1)

Landauer's Principle

50

(3)

The Reversible Computer

53

(4)

Reversibility and the Laws of Physics

57

(1)

Is the Universe a Computer?

58

(3)

The Fredkin Gate

61

(3)

The Billiard Ball Computer

64

(7)

The God Game

71

(6)

Low-Energy Computing

77

(6)

The Logic of the Quantum Conspiracy

83

(35)

Feynman's U-Turn

83

(2)

Journey Into the Quantum Realm

85

(6)

Strange Correlations

91

(3)

The EPR Puzzle

94

(6)

Designer Hamiltonians

100

(4)

A Matter of Interpretation

104

(5)

The Case for Many Universes

109

(3)

The Universal Quantum Computer

112

(1)

The Turning Principle

113

(5)

Quantum Parallelism

118

(29)

The New Paradigm

118

(3)

The Meaning of Superposition

121

(1)

Counting on the Qubits

122

(3)

The Square Root of NOT

125

(3)

Rotations in Quantum Space

128

(3)

Controlled-NOT and the Toffoli Gate

131

(4)

Playing the Markets with a Quantum Computer

135

(2)

Turbocharged Algorithms

137

(1)

Tractability vs. Intractability

138

(2)

The Traveling Salesman Problem

140

(1)

Does P Equal NP?

141

(3)

Consulting the Oracle

144

(3)

Code Breaking and the Shor Algorithm

147

(42)

The Problem of Factorization

147

(2)

Secret Codes

149

(3)

Public-Key Cryptography

152

(2)

How Diffie-Hellman Works

154

(2)

The RSA Alogrithm

156

(2)

How RSA Works

158

(2)

Cryptography and the Real World

160

(4)

The Challenge of RSA-129

164

(3)

Factoring by E-Mail

167

(3)

Factorization Takes a Quantum Leap

170

(2)

Heat, Sound, and Fourier Series

172

(3)

Light, Music, and Fourier Transforms

175

(5)

The Quantum FFT

180

(9)

Privacy Lost, Privacy Regained

189

(40)

Messages from Across the Quantum Channel

189

(5)

All About Eve

194

(3)

Dial Q for Qubits

197

(5)

Quantum Clones and Counterfeit Coins

202

(2)

How to Send a Quantum Valentine

204

(4)

The Rise and Fall of Quantum Bit Commitment

208

(5)

Cryptography by Entanglement

213

(5)

Quantum Compression

218

(4)

Beam Me Up, Atom by Atom

222

(7)

How to Build a Quantum Computer

229

(39)

Going Universal

229

(3)

Two-Bit Processors

232

(3)

The Polymer Machine

235

(2)

The Trouble with Decoherence

237

(3)

Trapping the Atom

240

(8)

Flying Qubits

248

(4)

The Doctors of Spin

252

(7)

How Useful Is NMR Quantum Computation?

259

(3)

Connecting the Quantum Dots

262

(4)

Runners in the Quantum Race

266

(2)

Quantum Error Correction and Other Algorithms

268

(33)

Processing in the Dark

268

(3)

Democracy Among the Qubits

271

(3)

Three-Bit Quantum Error Correction

274

(4)

How Does Quantum Error Correction Scale?

278

(2)

Crossing the Error Threshold

280

(2)

Creating the GHZ State

282

(6)

Take a Ride on the Universal Quantum Simulator

288

(3)

Searching a Quantum Phone Directory

291

(4)

Amadeus and the Quantum Complexity Puzzle

295

(2)

The Shape of Quantum Circuits to Come

297

(4)

Visions of the Quantum Age

301

(46)

A Quantum Computing Road Map

301

(3)

Nanotechnology and the Singularity

304

(6)

DNA Computing

310

(5)

Clones, Consciousness, and the Indivisible Soul

315

(3)

Quantum Gravity and the Measurement Problem

318

(2)

Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?

320

(5)

Why Is the Universe Comprehensible?

325

(2)

Trading Histories for Universes

327

(3)

Are Decoherent Histories the Answer?

330

(2)

The Quantum Universe and the Omega Point

332

(15)

Appendix A

347

(1)

Appendix B

347

(1)

Appendix C

348

(1)

Appendix D

349

(6)

Appendix E

355

(1)

Appendix F

356

(1)

Appendix G

356

(1)

Appendix H

357

(2)

Notes

359

(14)

Bibliography

373

(2)

Index

375

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Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse THE QUEST FOR THE QUANTUM COMPUTER

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials