IBM's
Test-Tube Quantum Computer Makes History; First Demonstration
Of Shor's Historic Factoring Algorithm
SAN
JOSE, Calif., -- Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research
Center have performed the world's most complicated quantum-computer
calculation to date. They caused a billion billion custom-designed
molecules in a test tube to become a seven-qubit quantum
computer that solved a simple version of the mathematical
problem at the heart of many of today's data-security
cryptographic systems.
"This
result reinforces the growing realization that quantum
computers may someday be able to solve problems that are
so complex that even the most powerful supercomputers
working for millions of years can't calculate the answers,"
said Nabil Amer, manager and strategist of IBM Research's
physics of information group.
In
today's issue of the scientific journal Nature, a team
of IBM scientists and Stanford University graduate students
report the first demonstration of "Shor's Algorithm"
-- a method developed in 1994 by AT&T scientist Peter
Shor for using the futuristic quantum computer to find
a number's factors -- numbers that are multiplied together
to give the original number. Today, factoring a large
number is so difficult for conventional computers -- yet
so simple to verify --that it is used by many cryptographic
methods to protect data.
A
quantum computer gets its power by taking advantage of
certain quantum properties of atoms or nuclei that allow
them to work together as quantum bits, or "qubits,"
which serve simultaneously as the computer's processor
and memory . By directing the interactions between qubits
while keeping them isolated from the external environment,
scientists enable a quantum computer to perform certain
calculations, such as factoring, exponentially faster
than conventional computers. When factoring large numbers
using a conventional computer, each added digit roughly
doubles the time to find the factors. In contrast, the
quantum factoring time increases by only a constant increment
with each additional digit.
The
simplest meaningful instance of Shor's Algorithm is finding
the factors of the number 15, which requires a seven-qubit
quantum computer. IBM chemists designed and made a new
molecule that has seven nuclear spins -- the nuclei of
five fluorine and two carbon atoms -- which can interact
with each other as qubits, be programmed by radio frequency
pulses and be detected by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
instruments similar to those commonly used in hospitals
and chemistry labs.
The
IBM scientists controlled a vial of a billion billion
(10**18) of these molecules so they executed Shor's algorithm
and correctly identified 3 and 5 as the factors of 15.
"Although the answer may appear to be trivial, the
unprecedented control required over the seven spins during
the calculation made this the most complex quantum computation
performed to date," Amer said.
"Now
we have the challenge of turning quantum computation into
an engineering reality," said Isaac Chuang, leader
of the research team and now an associate professor at
MIT. "If we could perform this calculation at much
larger scales -- say the thousands of qubits required
to factor very large numbers --fundamental changes would
be needed in cryptography implementations."
While
the potential for quantum computing is huge and recent
progress is encouraging, commercial quantum computers
are still many years away. NMR-based quantum computers
are laboratory experiments. The first quantum computing
applications would likely to be co-processors for specific
functions, such as solving difficult mathematical problems,
modeling quantum systems and performing unstructured searches.
Word processing or simple problem-solving tasks are more
easily handled by today's computers.
IBM's
demonstration of Shor's algorithm also shows the value
of quantum computing experiments using NMR, an approach
pioneered independently in the mid-1990s by Chuang and
Neil Gershenfeld of MIT and by David Cory and colleagues,
also at MIT. "Our NMR experiments stimulated us to
develop fundamental tools that can be used in many future
types of quantum computers," said Chuang. "Most
important of these was a way to simulate and predict the
signal degradation caused by 'decoherence' -- unintended
quantum fluctuations. This tool enabled us to minimize
decoherence errors in our 7-qubit experiment."
While
NMR will continue to provide a testbed for developing
quantum computing tools and techniques, it will be very
difficult to develop and synthesize molecules with many
more than seven qubits. As a result, new experiments at
IBM and elsewhere are aimed at developing new quantum
computing systems that can more easily "scale"
to the large numbers of qubits needed for practical applications.
Strong candidates today include electron spins confined
in semiconductor nanostructures (often called quantum
dots), nuclear spins associated with single-atom impurities
in a semiconductor, and electronic or magnetic flux through
supercoductors. Atomic and optical implementations continue
to be evaluated.
Co-authors
of the Nature report with Chuang are Gregory Breyta, Mark
Sherwood and Costantino Yannoni of IBM-Almaden and Stanford
University graduate students Lieven M.K. Vandersypen and
Matthias Steffen.
Quantum
Computing History:
When
quantum computers were first proposed in the 1970s and
1980s (by theorists such as the late Richard Feynmann
of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.;
Paul Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois;
David Deutsch of Oxford U. in England., and Charles Bennett
of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights,
N.Y.), many scientists doubted that they could ever be
made practical. But in 1994, Peter Shor of AT&T Research
described a specific quantum algorithm for factoring large
numbers exponentially faster than conventional computers
-- fast enough to defeat the security of many public-key
cryptosystems. The potential of Shor's algorithm stimulated
many scientists to work toward realizing the quantum computers'
potential. Significant progress has been made in recent
years by numerous research groups around the world.
While
at IBM, Chuang extended his reputation as one of the world's
leading quantum computing experimentalist. He led the
team that demonstrated the world's first 2-qubit quantum
computer (in 1998 at University of California Berkeley).
At IBM-Almaden, Chuang and colleagues were first to demonstrate
important quantum computing algorithms -- Grover's database-search
algorithm in 1999 with a 3-qubit quantum computer and
order finding last year (August 2000) with a 5-qubit quantum
computer. The factorization using Shor's algorithm announced
today is the most complex algorithm yet to be demonstrated
by a quantum computer.
In
addition to its ambitious experimental program, IBM Research
is also noted for its many theoretical contributions to
the emerging field of quantum information. IBM scientists
pioneered quantum cryptography, quantum communications
(including the concept of quantum teleportation) and efficient
methods of error correction. David DiVincenzo, research
staff member at IBM's Watson lab, has promulgated the
five criteria necessary for a practical quantum computer:
1) a scalable physical system with well-characterized
qubits; 2) the ability to initialize the qubit state;
decoherence times much longer than the quantum gate operation
time; 4) a universal set of quantum gates; and 5) the
ability to measure specific qubits.
Source:
IBM Research Division http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden
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