An Inside look at QUANTUM COMPUTING

Listening the word 'Quantum Computers' these days makes us think of a substantial significance that it has or will have in the course of time, isn't it?

So lets talk!

 

Definitely I will not start with the definition. But instead, let's go get a glimpse of it through an example. Let's say I have a situation where I have a baby elephant and it wants to meet its mother who is far away. He has around 100 ways to reach its home, now it definitely would want to choose a path that is the shortest one.

 

So let's try to find out the shortest path with our traditional classical computer, what it will do is it will check each path by taking considering one at a time and then finally find the shortest path after a hundred counts. So if it takes one second to check one path, it would take a hundred seconds to find out the shortest path.

 

Now when we try out the same problem with the quantum computer, it will consider all the paths at the same time and find out the shortest one. Hence in just one second, we'll get the results for the shortest path.

 

And this is why we will need quantum computers.

 

Now let's take another example. You should know that there exist some propositions or we can say some mathematical statements that are yet to be proved. Statements like, what values of x and y will prove the statement 2999x+1001y+59=52 to be true. For that, we'll have to try it out with each digit and with all its combinations and find the right one out. But there are some proofs that have the values of x's and y's which goes to hundred's and even thousand's of digits and manually it will definitely get difficult but after a certain level, even classical computer will find it difficult to process it.

 

Whereas with quantum computers, this task is believed to be achieved in minutes or in fact seconds depending on what the problem is! So, now it's certain that this is just amazing!

 

Now let's get the sight of how quantum computers differ from that of a classical computer.

 

Basically a bit is a basic unit of information in classical computers, whereas quantum information is stored in a qubit in quantum computers. A bit has the values either 0 or 1, whereas, qubits has the values 1 or 0 or both.

 

Yes, you read it right, it's both. So how can it be both?

 

Let's see.

When a coin is spinning, the outcome of whether it's heads or tails is unknown and the outcome is only known when it stops spinning. So while it is spinning, it is said to be in a superposition state of heads and tails. This is a similar case with a qubit. A qubit is in a superposition state of 0 and 1. Superposition is a thing that makes quantum computers very effective.

 

On the other side, bits in classical computer follows no principles such as superposition or anything similar, they are simple and in their way, they follow Newtonian Mechanics i.e, for example, things that follow Laws of Motion. Whereas quantum mechanics is for particles that are very small that they no longer behave normal, they get weird at a very small scale. Hence there was a need to study and get an idea of how they behave and conclude some sort of general rules and principles. As a result, we got QUANTUM MECHANICS.

 

So to bring things together,

 

What are all the basic principles used behind quantum computing?

 

Quantum computers make use of quantum mechanical phenomena such as Superposition and Entanglement.

 

We saw a glimpse of Superposition, now let's see what is Entanglement.

 

Again let's see it through an example.

 

So, let's say you have two boxes with a left and a right shoe. Now you don't know which box has what and let's say one of the boxes is on the earth the other one on the mars. Now let's talk about how one object affect the other and about Einstein's Spooky action at a distance. So when we open one box on the earth and find out that its the right shoe, within a second we can say confidently that the box on mars has the left shoe. We just saw information traveling with an unimaginably fast speed from earth to mars because of the shoes which were entangled i.e. linked together irrespective of what distance they are separated, but information traveling will take the same time anyways.

 

So, qubits basically follow the principle of Quantum mechanics called 'Entanglement'.

 

Quantum computers are today available virtually. A lot of companies like IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, etc are leading the way in quantum computing. In fact, many companies have made available these incredible quantum computers. For ex: One can access the IBM quantum computer.

 

Thanks for coming here.