Premise of quantum computing

• Simulating an N-bit quantum system on a classical computer requires an amount of computation exponential in N

  • Need to track 2N complex amplitudes simultaneously

• Nature updates real systems in constant time

  • Updates all the amplitudes simultaneously
  • Uses quantum superposition, or quantum parallelism

• Quantum computation: Use nature to compute

  • Use N qbits to represent 2N complex amplitudes
    • Compute with qbits
  • Harness quantum superposition to get exponential speedup

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