Quantum Computing

The fundamental limits of silicon computing motivated the idea of quantum computing several years ago. Although technological feats have not yet been established in the arena, promise of using quantum mechanical principles, flowing naturally from a consistent attempt to understand nature, is both assuring and satisfying. This seminar will discuss how quantum omputing is different from classical computing. It will make use of a simple quantum algorithm to show the inherent superiority of quantum techniques over their classical counterparts. This will be followed by an outline of some exciting areas in quantum information theory: namely entanglement and non-locality and will show how teleportation works. Finally, some plausible physical implementations of quantum computers will be sketched. The scope of the presentation will be elementary, and mathematics will be kept to a minimum.