Quantum Computing Challenges

Abstract

Recent discoveries in quantum information processing have brought a variety of deep, important and exciting challenges which need to be faced by physics, informatics and mathematics. The impact of these discoveries is broad and is reflected in new important relationships between the foundations of computing and physics. (a) The foundations of computing (information processing and communication) have to be built on the basis of the laws and limitations of quantum physics rather than classical physics. (b) Quantum physics offers powerful methods of encoding, processing and transmitting information that are not available in the classical world. Consequently, quantum information processing and communication systems seem to have the potential to be more efficient than their classical counterparts, while quantum communication systems seem to have the potential to be both more efficient and more secure than classical systems. (c) Quantum computing represents the area through which the fundamental physics is expected to have the most important technological impact in the foreseeable future. (d) Quantum information processing paradigms, concepts and methods seem to have the potential to contribute to a better understanding of quantum phenomena and, thereby, to a better comprehension of the laws and limitations of Nature; this, in turn, may have far-reaching implications for science and technology.