Big data and quantum computation

Abstract

With the explosion of big data, higher requirements for computational efficiency have emerged. Compared with classical computing, quantum computing possesses quantum parallelism due to the unique nature of quantum systems. It has been found that many classical algorithms can be accelerated using quantum computing. In addition to factorizing a large integer, quantum computers can be used for data processing and analysis. In recent years, two frontiers, i.e., big data and quantum computing have begun to merge. Though practical quantum computers have not yet been built, theoretical studies have made some important progress. In this review, we introduce the basic principles of quantum computing. As a representative example, we describe the Grover search algorithm and its important generalizations. Quantum machine learning is the entry point for the integration of big data with quantum computation. We review in detail, the applications of quantum computation in data mining, the main application of machine learning. Other aspects of quantum computing in big data are also briefly summarized.