Note: I'm not a professional quantum scientist so if any real ones come along please tell me if I'm getting this right, and please correct any mistakes that you

Note: I'm not a professional quantum scientist so if any real ones come along please tell me if I'm getting this right, and please correct any mistakes that you see in my logic. From my understanding so far: One benefit of using qubits is that you can map multiple of them to one traditional bit. Let's say we use light for our quantum computer. I like to see a wave of light as a continuous stream of photons, and photons as "an order". I'm assuming all waves and photons in the rest of this comment are of the same frequency. If you have a vertically polarised wave of light, it orders you this: "at time 1: jump up. at time 2: jump down. at time 3: jump up, ..." If you have a horizontally polarised photon, it orders you this: "at time 1: move left. at time 2: move right. at time 3: move left, ..." We can start by saying "horizontal polarization is 0" and "vertical polarization is 1". H = 0 V = 1 If we define XOR using only H and V: H ^ H = H (0) H ^ V = V (1) V ^ H = V (1) V ^ V = H (0) Let's now add phase to the qubits to enhance them. Phase can be seen as adding a time delay (or "shift") to all of the photons. Let's see the vertically polarized photon again: "at time 1: jump up. at time 2: jump down. at time 3: jump up, ..." And at 180 degree phase, you shift all orders by 1 time unit: "at time 1: jump down. at time 2: jump up. at time 3: jump down, ..." One fun and useful property of phase is that if you have two photons of the same polarization but they are at phases 180 degrees apart from each other, they will cancel each other out because you cannot move up and down at the same time. Getting back to qubits and XOR: Let's say H at 180 phase is I, and V at 180 phase is W. Note that I is still horizontally polarized, and W is still vertically polarized. Let's bring them together, where we have 4 types of qubits mapped to 2 types of bits: H = 0 I = 0 V = 1 W = 1 Let's add a step to the XOR operation: - if the right input is V, phase shift the output by 180 degrees The outputs of our "XOR 2.0: quantum edition": H ^ H = H, no shift = H (0) H ^ V = V, shift it = W (1) V ^ H = V, no shift = V (1) V ^ V = H, shift it = I (0) Now we have output that still matches the original definition of XOR when mapped to traditional bits, but with the bonus of reversibility. H => 0,0 W => 0,1 V => 1,0 I => 1,1