Reply II to “Comment on ‘Some implications of the quantum nature of laser fields for quantum computations’ ”

Abstract

In this revised reply to quant-ph/0211165, I address the question of the validity of my results in greater detail, by comparing my predictions to those of the Silberfarb-Deutsch model, and I deal at greater length with the beam area paradox. As before, I conclude that my previous results are an (order-of-magnitude) accurate estimate of the error probability introduced in quantum logical operations by the quantum nature of the laser field. While this error will typically (for a paraxial beam) be smaller than the total error due to spontaneous emission, a unified treatment of both effects reveals that they lead to formally similar constraints on the minimum number of photons per pulse required to perform an operation with a given accuracy; these constraints agree with those I have derived elsewhere.