Quantum computing

![Bloch sphere representation of a qubit. The state ${\displaystyle |\psi \rangle =\alpha |0\rangle +\beta |1\rangle }$ is a point on the surface of the sphere, partway between the poles, ${\displaystyle |0\rangle }$ and ${\displaystyle |1\rangle }$.](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Blochsphere.svg/250px-Blochsphere.svg.png)

History

As physicists applied quantum mechanical models to computational problems and swapped digital bits for qubits, the fields of quantum mechanics and computer science began to converge. In 1980, Paul Benioff introduced the quantum Turing machine, which uses quantum theory to describe a simplified computer. When digital computers became faster, physicists faced an exponential increase in overhead when simulating quantum dynamics, prompting Yuri Manin and Richard Feynman to independently suggest that hardware based on quantum phenomena might be more efficient for computer simulation. In a 1984 paper, Charles Bennett) and Gilles Brassard applied quantum theory to cryptography protocols and demonstrated that quantum key distribution could enhance information security.

History

![Peter Shor (pictured here in 2017) showed in 1994 that a scalable quantum computer would be able to break RSA encryption.](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/PeterShor2017DiracMedalAwardCeremony.png/250px-PeterShor2017DiracMedalAwardCeremony.png)

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Quantum computing