The complexity of noise [electronic resource] : a philosophical outlook on quantum error correction / Amit Hagar.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Part of: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.

Series from website.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-70).

Preface -- Acknowledgments --

1. Introduction --

2. The curse of the open system -- Optimism -- The birth of quantum error correction -- The miracle of active fault-tolerant QEC -- Pessimism -- The Hamiltonian picture -- Those who cannot remember the past -- Two problems in the foundations of SM -- The roots of the open system approach -- There is always a little noise -- Towards more realistic noise models -- Optimal skepticism --

3. To balance a pencil on its tip -- The passive approach to quantum error correction -- Lessons from the foundations of classical statistical mechanics -- To balance a pencil on its tip -- Practical vs. physical possibility --

4. Universality at all cost -- Overview -- Noise, classical or quantum -- Commit a sin twice and it will not seem a crime -- The return of Maxwell's demon -- Progress, or lack thereof -- True and false collapse -- The search for QIMDS -- The ancilla argument -- Progress --

5. Coda --

A. The dynamics of an open quantum system -- B. A noiseless qubit -- Bibliography -- Author's biography.

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In quantum computing, where algorithms exist that can solve computational problems more efficiently than any known classical algorithms, the elimination of errors that result from external disturbances or from imperfect gates has become the "holy grail", and a worldwide quest for a large scale fault-tolerant, and computationally superior quantum computer is currently taking place. Optimists rely on the premise that, under a certain threshold of errors, an arbitrary long fault-tolerant quantum computation can be achieved with only moderate (i.e., at most polynomial) overhead in computational cost. Pessimists, on the other hand, object that there are in principle (as opposed to merely technological) reasons why such machines are still inexistent, and that no matter what gadgets are used, large scale quantum computers will never be computationally superior to classical ones. Lacking a complete empirical characterization of quantum noise, the debate on the physical possibility of such machines invites philosophical scrutiny. Making this debate more precise by suggesting a novel statistical mechanical perspective thereof is the goal of this project.

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