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“Digital” quantum gates on superconducting quantum processors are implemented by changing the system Hamiltonian (by e.g. changing the magnetic flux through the
by ThePhysicist 8y ago
“Digital” quantum gates on superconducting quantum processors are implemented by changing the system Hamiltonian (by e.g. changing the magnetic flux through the qubit Josephson junction loop or driving the qubits with microwave radiation), so in that sense those quantum processors are analog. Most current quantum algorithms require a series of discrete operations to be performed (e.g. the Grover search is basically a for loop that executes a phase-encoding search function and a diffusion operator in each step), so they require a specific gate set to run them. That said researchers also used superconducting quantum processors to simulate other quantum systems using an analog approach, which is often more efficient than using a digital approach (so-called Trotter based quantum simulation), so both techniques are relevant I’d say.
- adamnemecek 8y ago> Most current quantum algorithms require a series of discrete operations to be performed Ok so what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-variable_quantum_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-variable_quantum_in...
- ThePhysicist 8y agoThat means that an analog quantum computer will not give you much advantage when running e.g. Grover search if there’s not a more efficient implementation using a continuous variable approach (which to my knowledge isn’t), so it is not even clear how analog quantum computers could replace the gate-based approach there.
- adamnemecek 8y agoLike, I'm not particularly married to Grover's algorithm or any other gate based algorithm. Throw them all out of the window for all I care.