From imaginary experiments to

quantum information

Luis A. Orozco
St. Marys College, March 2013.
www.jqi.umd.edu
 With special thanks to:

William D. Phillips
Howard J. Carmichael
Steven L. Rolston
Pablo Barberis Blostein
Ivan H. Deutsch

Work supported by
National Science Foundation
Classical World

speed!
time!
10,000X!

50 micrometers!
 Quantum World

10,000X!

The world becomes discrete it comes in quanta!

It all started in the 19th century
 The birth of quantum theory
an act of desperationI had to obtain a positive result
under any circumstances and at whatever cost

Oct. 7, 1900
3
8h 1
( ,T ) = 3 h / kT
c e 1

Coffee and Cake with the Rubens

Max Planck
 1905 the photon, is the quantum of
light"

Albert Einstein
 Radioactivity has been around for 15 years. "

use alpha particles to

bombard gold atoms and
look at how they bounce
back. Some come back
almost in the same
trajectory implying a very
small but highly
concentrated group of
positive charges."
1911Rutherford discovers
Ernest Rutherford
the nucleus"
1913 visit to Rutherford

Niels Bohr
 1920s Quantum Theory
Heisenberg
Schrodinger
Dirac
De Broglie
Pauli
Born
 Quantum Theory

Described by wavefunction
Describes probability, not reality. This is the source
of many discussions.
Uncertainty principle two properties (such as
position and velocity) cannot simultaneously be
known to arbitrary accuracy
Wave-particle duality things can be wavelike or
particlelike
Principle of superposition
Wavefunction collapse when measured
An electron is like a spinning top.

The spin can or down

only point up

AND it can be BOTH up and down at

the same time!
SUPERPOSTION:
1
= 2
( + )
How can something be in two places at the same time?

This cube could be

Fred Alan Wolf, "Taking the Quantum Leap"

(Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981)
How can something be in two places at the same time?

this or

Fred Alan Wolf, "Taking the Quantum Leap"

(Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981)
How can something be in two places at the same time?

or this

Fred Alan Wolf, "Taking the Quantum Leap"

(Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981)
 but

this and this

No classical analog to superposition exists.

Fred Alan Wolf, "Taking the Quantum Leap"
(Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981)
 Quantum Mechanics
The most successful physical theory
Tested to parts in a trillion
Never proven wrong or incomplete*

* Except it is not yet compatible with general relativity (gravity).

 Quantum Mechanics enabled the Information
Age
The transistor (1948)
Microelectronics
Lasers (1960)
Magnetic storage
 Quantum mechanics has given us a superb
understanding of chemistry and materials
 Einstein was not happy
with the consequences of
quantum mechanics
Schroedinger reacted to
the questions of Einstein
with the term
Entanglement.

This is where quantum

mechanics gets weird.
 +

If blue is measured V, red MUST be H

David Wineland Nobel Lecture
Correlations
 +

If blue is measured -45, red MUST be +45

The dialogue between Bohr and Einstein was long
and many times included imaginary experiments
(gedanken) that quantum mechanics always
explained
Bohr drew this
imaginary experiment
to study the relation
between time and
energy with Einstein
 1964 John Bell:
Is entanglement
measurable?
If we assume reality
and locality, this is not
consistent with the
results of QM
tested numerous times
 Bell theorem on 1964 implies that
You must give up something:

Objective Reality

Locality (causality)
 Quantum mechanics is a theory about
our (incomplete) knowledge of nature, not
of nature itself.

And thats all there is.

 The end of Moores Law
In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we are
approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental
barrierWe have another 10 to 20 years . G. Moore
2009."
"Put weirdness of quantum mechanics to
work

A second quantum revolution

David Wineland, Nobel Lecture
Experiments manage to trap work individual matter quanta
starting in the 70s.

Trapped electrons and ions (Dehmelt and Wineland)

Quantum jumps of electrons between levels in an ion
(Dehmelt, Toshek, Wineland)

Hans Dehmelt David Wineland

Monoelectron Oscillator, D. Wineland, P. Ekstrom,
and H. Dehmelt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 31, 2179 (1973)
Experiments manage to trap and work with individual light
quanta starting in the 80s.

Trapped photons (Walther and Haroche)

Micro-laser, Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics.

Herbert Walther Serge Haroche

 Peter Zoller Jean Dalibard Howard Carmichael

Quantum Mechanical formulation based on Quantum Jumps

(Zoller, Dalibard, Carmichael)
Observation of Quantum Jumps in a Single Ion, J. C.
Bergquist, Randall G. Hulet, Wayne M. Itano, and D. J. Wineland
Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 1699 (1986)
Serge Haroche, Nobel Lecture
Serge Haroche, Nobel lecture
Two trapped ions (JQI Monroe Lab)
Terraciano et al Nature Physics 2009
 Bennett Landauer Benioff
(1982) (1961) (1985)

Reversible computing (thermodynamics)

Quantum Information
Quantum simulations Model of a universal quantum circuit

Deutsch
Feynman (1985)
(1982)
 A New Science!
Quantum
Information
Mechanics 20th Century Science

Quantum Information Science

21st Century
 Classical Bits vs Quantum Bits
Classical Bit: 0 or 1; or

Quantum Bit (Qubit):

Can be a quantum superposition of 0 and 1
1
= +
qubit
But entanglement, and the scaling that results, is the key
to the power of quantum computing.
Classically information is stored in a bit register: a 3-bit
register can store one number from 0 to 7

101

Quantum Mechanically, a register of 3 entangled

qubits can store all of these numbers in superposition:
a|000 + b|001 + c|010 + d| 011 + e|100 + f|101 + g| 110 + h| 111

Result:
-- Classical: one N-bit number
-- Quantum: 2N (all possible) N-bit numbers
 A hard problem-factoring large integers:

For example, it is hard to factor 167 659

But an elementary school student can easily multiply

389 x 431 = 167 659

 CRYPTOGRAPHY

Virtually all public key cryptographic systems

rely on the difficulty of factoring large numbers

If you can figure out how to do this, your credit

card is not safe and neither are government
communications, financial transactions,
personal information
12301866845301177551304949583849627207728535695
9
53347921973224521517264005072636575187452021997
8
64693899564749427740638459251925573263034537315
4
82685079170261221429134616704292143116022212404
7
9274737794080665351419597459856902143413
12301866845301177551304949583849627207728535695
9
53347921973224521517264005072636575187452021997
8
64693899564749427740638459251925573263034537315
4
82685079170261221429134616704292143116022212404
2 years 1000 7computers
9274737794080665351419597459856902143413
1230186684530117755130494958384962720772853569595334792197
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6384592519255732630345373154826850791702612214291346167042
9214311602221240479274737794080665351419597459856902143413
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4 years 1,000,000,000,000 computers

The Quantum Computer

1994 Peter Shor

With Quantum Mechanics, it is

possible to factor an N-digit
number in ~ N3 steps much
faster than the exponentially large
number of steps that we need
now.
 Quantum computing:
Universial machine (Shors algorithm)
Quantum simulation

Quantum cryptography: Quantum Communication:

Key distribution (QKD) Channel capacity
Secret sharing Distributed computing

Quantum metrology
Precision sensors
 A quantum computer (if we can make one) would be more
different from our current digital computers than our computers
are from the ancient abacus.

A general-purpose quantum computer is years away, but

along the way we will be exploring some of the most
important outstanding questions in science.
Quantum Mechanics and Information Science have been
two of the most important and revolutionary developments
in the XX Century, affecting both science and technology

Quantum mechanics changed the way we think about the

physical world and the nature of reality. It gave us modern
electronics with all its advantages.

Information science changed the way we think about

thinking. They gave us digital information.

They are now merging into Quantum information and we

can only wait a greater revolution.
Thanks!