QUANTUM COMPUTING

SEMINAR REPORT

Submitted by

GOPINATH.V Register No:17TC1124

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION

ENGINEERING

MANAKULA VINAYAGAR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

PUDUCHERRY – 605 107
 QUANTUM COMPUTING

INTRODUCTION:

Around 2030 computers might not have any transistors and chips. Think of a
computer that is much faster than a common classical silicon computer. This might be a
quantum computer. Theoretically it can run without energy consumption and billion
times faster than today’s PIII computers. Scientists already think about a quantum
computer, as a next generation of classical computers. Gershenfeld says that if making
transistors smaller and smaller is continued with the same rate as in the past years, then
by the year of 2020, the width of a wire in a computer chip will be no more than a size of
a single atom. These are sizes for which rules of classical physics no longer apply.
Computers designed on today's chip technology will not continue to get cheaper and
better. Because of its great power, quantum computer is an attractive next step in
computer technology. A technology of quantum computers is also very different. For
operation, quantum computer uses quantum bits (qubits). Qubit has a quaternary nature.
Quantum mechanic’s laws are completely different from the laws of a classical physics.
A qubit can exist not only in the states corresponding to the logical values 0 or 1 as in the
case of a classical bit, but also in a superposition state. A qubit is a bit of information that
can be both zero and one simultaneously (Superposition state). Thus, a computer working
on a qubit rather than a standard bit can make calculations using both values
simultaneously. A qubyte, is made up of eight qubits and can have all values from zero to
255 simultaneously. “Multi-qubyte systems have a power beyond anything possible with
classical computers.” Forty qubits could have the same power as modern supercomputers.
According to Chuang a supercomputer needs about a month to find a phone number from
the database consisting of world's phone books, where a quantum computer is able to
solve this task in 27 minutes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University,
IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory are the most successful in development of
quantum computer.
DEFINITION:

A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of

quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform
operations on data. Quantum computers are different from traditional computers based on
transistors. encrypted email, and many other types of data. Breaking these would have
significant ramifications for electronic privacy and security.

ALGORITHMS FOR QUANTUM COMPUTING:

Quantum computing is the exploitation of collective properties

of quantum states, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform computation. The
devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. They
are believed to be able to solve certain computational problems, such as integer
factorization substantially faster than classical computers. The study of quantum
computing is a subfield of quantum information science. Expansion is expected in the
next few years as the field shifts toward real-world use in pharmaceutical, data security
and other applications.

Quantum computing began in 1980 when physicist Paul Benioff proposed

a quantum mechanical model of the Turing machine. Richard Feynman and Yuri
Manin later suggested that a quantum computer had the potential to simulate things
a classical computer could not feasibly do. In 1994, Peter Shor developed a quantum
algorithm for factoring integers with the potential to decrypt RSA-encrypted
communications. Despite ongoing experimental progress since the late 1990s, most
researchers believe that "fault-tolerant quantum computing is still a rather distant dream."
In recent years, investment in quantum computing research has increased in the public
and private sectors. On 23 October 2019, Google AI, in partnership with the U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), claimed to have performed a
quantum computation that was infeasible on any classical computer.

There are several types of quantum computers (also known as quantum

computing systems), including the quantum circuit model, quantum Turing
machine, adiabatic quantum computer, one-way quantum computer, and various quantum
cellular automata. The most widely used model is the quantum circuit, based on the
quantum bit, or "qubit", which is somewhat analogous to the bit in classical computation.
A qubit can be in a 1 or 0 quantum state, or in a superposition of the 1 and 0 states. When
it is measured, however, it is always 0 or 1; the probability of either outcome depends on
the qubit's quantum state immediately prior to measurement.

Efforts towards building a physical quantum computer focus on technologies such

as transmons, ion traps and topological quantum computers, which aim to create high-
quality qubits. These qubits may be designed differently, depending on the full quantum
computer's computing model, whether quantum logic gates, quantum annealing,
or adiabatic quantum computation.

There are currently a number of significant obstacles to constructing useful

quantum computers. It is particularly difficult to maintain qubits' quantum states, as they
suffer from quantum decoherence and state fidelity. Quantum computers therefore
require error correction.

Any computational problem that can be solved by a classical computer can also be solved
by a quantum computer. Conversely, any problem that can be solved by a quantum
computer can also be solved by a classical computer, at least in principle given enough
time. In other words, quantum computers obey the Church–Turing thesis.

This means that while quantum computers provide no additional advantages over
classical computers in terms of computability, quantum algorithms for certain problems
have significantly lower time complexities than corresponding known classical
algorithms.

Notably, quantum computers are believed to be able to quickly solve certain problems
that no classical computer could solve in any feasible amount of time—a feat known as
"quantum supremacy."

The study of the computational complexity of problems with respect to quantum

computers is known as quantum complexity theory.
TYPES OF QUANTUM COMPUTERS:

 Building a functional quantum computer requires holding an object in a

superposition state long enough to carry out various processes on them.

 Unfortunately, once a superposition meets with materials that are part of a

measured system, it loses its in-between state in what's known as decoherence and
becomes a boring old classical bit.

 Devices need to be able to shield quantum states from decoherence, while still
making them easy to read.

 Different processes are tackling this challenge from different angles, whether it's
to use more robust quantum processes or to find better ways to check for errors.

WORKING:

Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object's state

before it is measured - instead of just 1s or 0s - which means they have the potential to
process exponentially more data compared to classical computers.
 Classical computers carry out logical operations using the definite position of a
physical state. These are usually binary, meaning its operations are based on one of two
positions. A single state - such as on or off, up or down, 1 or 0 - is called a bit.

In quantum computing, operations instead use the quantum state of an object to

produce what's known as a qubit. These states are the undefined properties of an object
before they've been detected, such as the spin of an electron or the polarisation of a
photon.

Rather than having a clear position, unmeasured quantum states occur in a mixed
'superposition', not unlike a coin spinning through the air before it lands in your hand.

These superpositions can be entangled with those of other objects, meaning their
final outcomes will be mathematically related even if we don't know yet what they are.

The complex mathematics behind these unsettled states of entangled 'spinning

coins' can be plugged into special algorithms to make short work of problems that would
take a classical computer a long time to work out... if they could ever calculate them at
all.

Such algorithms would be useful in solving complex mathematical problems, producing

hard-to-break security codes, or predicting multiple particle interactions in chemical
reactions.

QUBITS AND SUPERPOSITION:

The ordinary bits we use in typical digital computers are either 0 or 1. You can
read them whenever you want, and unless there is a flaw in the hardware, they won’t
change. Qubits aren’t like that. They have a probability of being 0 and a probability of
being 1, but until you measure them, they may be in an indefinite state. That state, along
with some other state information that allows for additional computational complexity,
can be described as being at an arbitrary point on a sphere (of radius 1), that reflects both
the probability of being measured as a 0 or 1 (which are the north and south poles).
 The qubit’s state is a combination of the values along all three axes. This is called
superposition. Some texts describe this property as “being in all possible states at the
same time,” while others think that’s somewhat misleading and that we’re better off
sticking with the probability explanation. Either way, a quantum computer can actually
do math on the qubit while it is in superposition — changing the probabilities in various
ways through logic gates — before eventually reading out a result by measuring it. In all
cases, though, once a qubit is read, it is either 1 or 0 and loses its other state information.

Qubits typically start life at 0, although they are often then moved into an indeterminate
state using a Hadamard Gate, which results in a qubit that will read out as 0 half the time
and 1 the other half. Other gates are available to flip the state of a qubit by varying
amounts and directions — both relative to the 0 and 1 axes, and also a third axis
that represents phase, and provides additional possibilities for representing information.
The specific operations and gates available depend on the quantum computer and toolkit
you’re using.

QUANTUM ALGORITHMS WILL CHANGE CRYPTOGRAPHY:

Superposition and entanglement are impressive physical phenomena, but leveraging them
to do computation requires a very different mindset and programming model. You can’t
simply throw your C code on a quantum computer and expect it to run, and certainly not
to run faster. Fortunately, mathematicians and physicists are way ahead of the computer
builders here, having developed clever algorithms that take advantage of quantum
computers decades before the machines started to appear.

Some of the first quantum algorithms created, and honestly, some of the few useful ones
I’ve found that you can understand without a graduate degree in math, are for secure
cryptographic key distribution. These algorithms use the property of entanglement to
allow the key creator to send one of each of many pairs of qubits to the recipient. The full
explanation is pretty long, but the algorithms rely on the fact that if anyone intercepts and
reads one of the entangled bits en route, the companion qubit at the sender will be
affected. By passing some statistics back and forth, the sender and receiver can figure out
whether the key was transmitted securely, or was hacked on the way.

You may have read that quantum computers one day could break most current
cryptography systems. They will be able to do that because there are some very clever
algorithms designed to run on quantum computers that can solve a hard math problem,
which in turn can be used to factor very large numbers.

One of the most famous is Shor’s Factoring Algorithm. The difficulty of factoring large
numbers is essential to the security of all public-private key systems — which are the
most commonly used today.

Current quantum computers don’t have nearly enough qubits to attempt the task, but
various experts predict they will within the next 3-8 years.

That leads to some potentially dangerous situations, such as if only governments and the
super-rich had access to the ultra-secure encryption provided by quantum computers.

USES OF QUANTUM COMPUTING

Quantum computing is used in various sectors as of now and aims to see a spike. The
sectors where it is used are-
 Logistics sectors- to find the optimal delivery route in different cities.
  Finance sector- for balancing the risk of investment portfolios.
 Medicine sector- pharmaceutical companies used them to stimulate molecules for
better drug interaction, for example, supercomputing along with AI is used in
Chemistry for drug discovery.
 
The other fields where quantum computing is used include:
 Cybersecurity.
 Financial Modeling.
 Better Batteries.
 Cleaner Fertilization.
 Traffic Optimization.
 Weather Forecasting and Climate Change.
 Solar Capture.

ADVANTAGES:

 The main advantage of quantum computing is it can execute any task very faster
when compared to the classical computer, generally the atoms changes very faster
in case of the traditional computing whereas in quantum computing it changes
even more faster. But all the tasks can’t be done better by quantum computing
when compared to traditional computer.
 In quantum computing qubit is the conventional superposition state and so there is
an advantage of exponential speedup which is resulted by handle number of
calculations. 
 The other advantage of quantum computing is even classical algorithm
calculations are also performed easily which is similar to the classical computer. 

DISADVANTAGES OF QUANTUM COMPUTING:

 The main disadvantage of computing is the technology required to implement a
quantum computer is not available at present. The reason for this is the consistent
electron is damaged as soon as it is affected by its environment and that electron
is very much essential for the functioning of quantum computers.
  The research for this problem is still continuing the effort applied to identify a
solution for this problem has no positive progress. 

CONCLUSION
The field of quantum computing is growing rapidly as many of today's leading computing
groups, universities, colleges, and all the leading IT vendors are researching the topic.
This pace is expected to increase as more research is turned into practical applications.
Although practical machines lie years in the future, this formerly fanciful idea is gaining
plausibility.

The current challenge is not to build a full quantum computer right away; instead to move
away from the experiments in which we merely observe quantum phenomena to
experiments in which we can control these phenomena. Systems in which information
obeys the laws of quantum mechanics could far exceed the performance of any
conventional computer. Therein lies the opportunity and the reward. No one can predict
when we will build the first quantum computer; it could be this year, perhaps in the next
10 years, or centuries from now. Obviously, this mind-boggling level of computing
power has enormous commercial, industrial, and scientific applications, but there are
some significant technological and conceptual issue to resolve first.