Dr Xiao-Qi Zhou and his team at the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics in collaboration with the University of Queensland, Australia, have displayed that controlled operations, when the control bit exhibits state 1, can be simplified significantly on comparing with the standard technique.
The research team hopes that their approach will be used by quantum information technologies that include simulation of advanced systems, precise measurement, and eventually a quantum computer which is regarded as a robust computer type using quantum bits (qubits) instead of the conventional bits utilized in present computers.
Conventional transistors or bits can exist only in two states either 0 or 1 at one single time, whereas a qubit can exists in several states simultaneously. Thus qubits can be utilized to control and process huge volumes of data at a better rate.
The major obstacle concerning the realization of a quantum computer is the requirement of complex quantum circuits. The quantum algorithms feature of standard computers are built from a basic level of simple logic operations. Controlled operations are the key feature of most of the quantum algorithms. In order to realize controlled operations in traditional methods, it is necessary to decompose the operations into the basic logic gate set., this decomposition process is more complicated and it is not possible to obtain even smaller scale quantum circuits.
The research team has identified an entirely new method to handle this problem. Dr Xiao-Qi Zhou, a researcher handling this project, stated that by utilizing an additional degree of freedom related to quantum particles, the control operation can be realized in a unique way. The research team has built large number of controlled operations employing this method, he added. This will considerably decrease the complexity of the quantum circuits for realizing quantum computing, he stated.
Source: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/