February 12, 2003
Wednesday - 4:00 pm in Swain West 119
Speaker: Dr. Zdzislaw Meglicki , Information Technology, Indiana University
Title: Quantum computing: what's in it for the physicists?

Abstract:
... money, of course, but also a unique opportunity to revisit and revise the very foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that fathers (and mothers) of quantum mechanics could only "gedanken-experiment" about. The discipline of quantum computing is a prime example of a feedback circuit: it arose from the interest in fundamentals of quantum mechanics and now, years later, it provides physicists with new experimental and theoretical tools and ideas with which to explore the very fundamentals. This talk will review some of these developments, most notably electronic implementations of spin-1/2 systems as well as a novel formulation of discrete quantum mechanics that does away with probability amplitudes, traces, Hermitian operators and superoperators.

s to reveal to physicists themselves just how pervasive this kind of semi-irrational, wholly intuitive type of thinking is, in the mental activity known as "doing physics", in stark contrast to the more conventional picture whereby "doing physics" consists of careful reasoning with the aid of mathematical machinery. Some psychologists and cognitive scientists believe that by becoming more aware of the mechanisms of thought, one becomes more able to use one's mind effectively; if this is true, then learning about how analogies have helped previous generations of physicists might well help contemporary physicists to discover ideas they would not have thought of otherwise.