Quantum computer processor success

[sheeny (Al)]

I thought there might be enough people interested in both computers/IT and quantum physics here that might find this interesting. As it isn't astro related I've posted it in GC.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0906....2009.603.html

I love the fact that they're happy it gets the right answer 80% of the time and 90% of the time for another problem! That's quantum!

Al.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Voodoo stuff. Utterly brilliant. Well beyond my comprehension, let alone understanding.

[Rod66 (Rod)]

Gosh that's interesting stuff. As an IT person, I'm looking forward to the next 20 years. We're going to see the replacement of the 50 year old solid state resistor with something far more exotic and hence far more powerful. I would liken the potential leap here similar to the change from valves to resistors and hence integrated circuits. Lets hope it doesn't lead down a blind alley...

Rod

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Wish I could get my answers correct 80-90% of the time.

Frank

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Rod66

Gosh that's interesting stuff. As an IT person, I'm looking forward to the next 20 years. We're going to see the replacement of the 50 year old solid state resistor with something far more exotic and hence far more powerful. I would liken the potential leap here similar to the change from valves to resistors and hence integrated circuits. Lets hope it doesn't lead down a blind alley...

Rod

As an IT person, you'd mean transistors Rod...

I think that the gap here is so far beyond transitioning from valve technology through to transistors/ICs that it's not funny. This isn't an evolution in technology - it's a revolution. It'd be like saying that there was a big difference from the Model T to a Ferrari F430 when they're really the same thing, just refined over time! This quantum computing is so completely removed from what computing is now - it operates under a totally different principle. It's not just an update of the electronics we're talking about. The only similarity (I'm assuming) is that information still goes in one end and different information comes out the other...

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Right 80-90% of the time? So it already outperforms M$ .

Nah seriously, what this means is that Jen will have to learn to go much faster.

[Rod66 (Rod)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

As an IT person, you'd mean transistors Rod...

My god you're right - I must be getting old...

The step we're about to take is huge..who can really quantify it. Then again, who can really understand it..

[TrevorW]

Will it help pick the Lotto numbers ????

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Will it help pick the Lotton numbers ????

WOW, this is a really important experimental outcome. But I’m way more interested in the 80% and 90% hit outcomes than the physical gate (OOPS, it's not even a 'physical' gate, is it??? It's a super-positioning of all possible gates. A hologram of switches?!). This may present something startling to the world, as one of the possible outcomes of quantum processing, something several scientists are actually predicting, is evidence of free will [interference] at the particle level.

TrevorW - I realise that you were joking, but from what I know, if it conforms to Everett’s ‘Relative State’ formulation (otherwise known as ‘Many-Worlds’ interpretation), then yes, it could, in principle, be capable of offering a correct set of lotto numbers, but only if it disproves Aharanov’s “Time-Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics”. I’m sure Bell’s celebrated ‘Inequality’ would have something to say about it also. This would mean that the universe was entirely deterministic, ergo, knowable, and without freedom.

To achieve this, might rescind Einstein’s Special Relativity, in that no information or influence can travel faster than light; and that would include influence from the future, as the future is most definitely non-local (and thus a quantum property). A line between local and non-local events would also be drawn in the sand.

Personally, I feel we will never achieve future knowledge. The notion that we can know, in advance, future ‘Freedom of Choice’ interactions is nonsensical.

That being said, the 80% and 90% true outcomes may not be reducable, in that ‘Freedom of Choice’ interactions affect all events. So according to Aharanov’s work, we are “PROTECTED” from the future, and thus quantum states are preserved. This could mean that the 80% and 90% are the deterministically driven portions, which are knowable, and the remainder is freedom driven, and ultimately, unknowable.

You might be saying, “so what”, well to give you an idea as to the importance, time itself may be an outcome, just an effect, created between deterministic events and the influence of ‘Freedom of Choice’. So quantum processing is kind of like a prism which separates all the different colors of light, out of the original white light, but in this case it is separating events and behavior.

If anyone wants to PM me an email address, I’ll email you Aharanov’s white papers, the importance of the 80% and 90% figures will immediately become obvious.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

I understand some of it but some words i will need to understand first before making a serious supposition.

The two qubits are separated by a cavity that contains microwaves

I suppose we will be using radiation suits to work in an office

To me it sound like a modulation method but I suppose a modulation that can be created instead of inputted.

[Rod66 (Rod)]

Free will. Yes there is speculation that quantum computing may lead us to discovering there is no free will, that we are all just particles reacting in a predetermined way to other particles. Free will is just an illusion and a quantum computer can map out our lives...but imagine the poor sap that has to feed in every single predetermining factor that makes up the prediction...

Nesti, in your discussion, one has to consider if by knowing the future, does it really affect what we do next OR if knowing the future was already a predetermined consequence of our particles reaction to previous particle interaction. Thus changing our future because we see the future (and see something we didn't like) was already a known reaction and therefore no matter how many times we see the future and react to it, its still a known reaction and therefore we have no free will...
Your head will hurt if you think about this for too long.

Did someone mention Shrodingers Cat yet.. he should make an appearance... or will he...

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Hi Rod, I was wondering if you wanted to bring it up "Shrodingers Cat". Never heard of it till now, did a google search.

If you want an answer it is open for interpretation. Mine is "an observer is not an observer until the observer observe's"

Don't know what it got to do with the thread but what the hell.

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by Rod66

Nesti, in your discussion, one has to consider if by knowing the future, does it really affect what we do next OR if knowing the future was already a predetermined consequence of our particles reaction to previous particle interaction. Thus changing our future because we see the future (and see something we didn't like) was already a known reaction and therefore no matter how many times we see the future and react to it, its still a known reaction and therefore we have no free will...
Your head will hurt if you think about this for too long.

Um, I personally feel that knowing the future is impossible, however, knowing how the future is derived ie, the bits and pieces which come together in creating a stable physical environment, where deterministic behavior and freedom of choice peacefully coexist, can be known. BUT, knowing whether a particle will go this way or that, or whether the cat will be dead or alive, is just not possible. Freedom of Choice may well overpower determinism over extend numbers of events. If so, quantum computation will be accurate only most of the time, not ALL the time.

My head is fine; just spent 4 years writing on this exact subject.

(sorry for the length)
Aharanov writes;
"5.2 The Problem of Free-Will
The “destiny-generalization” of QM inspired by TSQM (§4.2) posits that
what happens in the present is a superposition of effects, with equal contribution from past and future events. At first blush, it appears that perhaps we, at the present, are not free to decide in our own mind what our future steps may be26. Nevertheless, we have shown [32] that freedom-of-will and destiny can “peacefully co-exist” in a way consistent with the aphorism “All is foreseen, yet choice is given” [78, 76].
The concept of free-will is mainly that the past may define the future,
yet after this future effect takes place, i.e. after it becomes past, then it
cannot be changed: we are free from the past, but, in this picture, we are not necessarily free from the future. Therefore, not knowing the future is a crucial requirement for the existence of free-will. In other words, the destinyvector cannot be used to inform us in the present of the result of our future free choices.
We have also shown [32] that free-will does not necessarily mean that
nobody can in principle know what the future will be because any attempt to communicate such knowledge will make the memory system unstable, thereby allowing the freedom to change the future. Suppose there is a person who can see into the future, a prophet. Then while we, at the present are making a decision, and have not yet decided, the prophet knows exactly what this decision will be. At this point, as long as this prophet does not tell us what our decision will be, we are still free to make it, since we know that if the prophet had told us what our decision was going to be, then we would be free to change it and his prophecy would no longer be true. Therefore, the prophet could be accurate as long as he doesn’t tell us our future decision. Our decisions stand alone and the prophet’s knowledge does not affect our free-will....Only in the future, when all the measurements are finished and we actually make the post-selection, can we retrospectively conclude whether the eccentric-weak-value shown by the measuring-device was either an error, or a real result due to the concrete post-selection. Again, the conditions for a weak-measurements require a high probability of experimental error. From this we conclude that our prophet, the post-selected vector coming from the future, does not tell us the information we need to violate our freewill, and we are still free to decide what kind of future measurements to conduct. Therefore, free-will survives."

[Robh (Rob)]

Originally Posted by Rod66

Free will. Yes there is speculation that quantum computing may lead us to discovering there is no free will, that we are all just particles reacting in a predetermined way to other particles. Free will is just an illusion and a quantum computer can map out our lives...

Beg to differ. Essentially, no outcome can be predicted with certainty. The slightest change in the most insignificant factor will change all subsequent events. The very act of measuring a state changes its characteristics. In my opinion quantum computers will be even more unpredictable than the computers of today. I have every confidence that free will transcends beyond any physical state of predictability.

Regards, Rob

[Bassnut (Fred)]

"We've made a very simple quantum processor," he says. "It's by no means a quantum computer." Thats for sure, this is a 2 bit processor folks, that is really useless. And even he admits they dont know how to read a higher number of qbits. This thing is a real long way from being on your desktop (theyve been working on this for years), maybe not in our lifetimes.

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by mswhin63

Hi Rod, I was wondering if you wanted to bring it up "Shrodingers Cat". Never heard of it till now, did a google search.

If you want an answer it is open for interpretation. Mine is "an observer is not an observer until the observer observe's"

Don't know what it got to do with the thread but what the hell.

Well how about that - you wrote "Never heard of it till now", then you wrote "an observer is not an observer until the observer observe's". Essentially you have nailed the essence of the issue, moreover, you have formed a rough base on which Relativity is built. By this I mean, that an observer is the origin of a relative viewpoint, and that unless a an observation is being made (seemingly with a level of intent), then there is no wave function collapse. Remember, quantum events happen within a relative framework, just like mass resides in spacetime and is therefore under the influence of gravitation, triggered by its own presence. Scary.

The relevance of this is simple; if a quantum computer relies on quantum effects, what interference will the observer have on the computations?!

The other issue is what is an observer? Perhaps an observer is simply a quantum field, a shared state or value, no different to the voltage of an electron or mass of a Tau. This is where we are now confronted by the issues of the observer just observing, or is it a conscious observation (not awareness as in human consciousness, that's different).

So if a tree falls in the forest...

[Rod66 (Rod)]

Nesti has hit the nail on the head here. Consider a shuffled pack of cards. Until you pick up the first card, every single card in that pack has an equal chance of appearing. So in essence, superposition is the existence of each possible state and each state has an equal chance of being the outcome. Now we don't know what the outcome will be, until we measure it or in this case, turn the first card over. The question is, what interference has occured in the outcome, ie has the shuffler influenced the result? Theoretically, the collapse of the wave function occurs at this point so the bridge between normal physics and quantum physics can exist and hence a conscious being can view the outcome.
What we need is an observer that can be defined as having no possible disturbance to the experiment being performed. Anyone know any non-corporeal beings?
I'm waiting for a creationist to invade our thread..

[Nesti (Mark)]

Originally Posted by Rod66

Consider a shuffled pack of cards. Until you pick up the first card, every single card in that pack has an equal chance of appearing. So in essence, superposition is the existence of each possible state and each state has an equal chance of being the outcome. Now we don't know what the outcome will be, until we measure it or in this case, turn the first card over. The question is, what interference has occured in the outcome, ie has the shuffler influenced the result? Theoretically, the collapse of the wave function occurs at this point so the bridge between normal physics and quantum physics can exist and hence a conscious being can view the outcome.
What we need is an observer that can be defined as having no possible disturbance to the experiment being performed. Anyone know any non-corporeal beings?
I'm waiting for a creationist to invade our thread..

Holy Cow Rod66 !!!! Obviously hearing those pennies now???

Let's go a little deeper, see if we can link-in time to particle behavior.

For those who may now be totally perplexed with this thread, and see no relevance to quantum computation, here's something I wrote several years ago for the general public...but is now at the editors.


Time and Impermanence
Time is the evolutionary process of cause and effect, we see it in the dynamism of particle events within spacetime, it is the change from one set of states and values, to another. Because we can observe its nature, we know that time affects fermions for sure, we cannot truthfully say that gravitons or bosons are also affected, remembering that causality results from event interactions, it is a measure of change, and the permanent FSRs (resonance in string particles) of the forces are constant, so it is prudent that we focus only on what matter is doing, and leave the forces to one side.

Essentially there are two types of time; the first is our macroscopic version, we see this as a smooth progressive phenomenon, running in a single direction, forward, the ‘arrow of time’. The second is time at the submicroscopic quantum scale, time in this realm is not smooth and progressive at all, in fact, it is turbulent and unpredictable, the arrow flips forward and backward continuously. Added to this, is the issue that space is also unpredictable and random, a particle exchange can run forward in time with the exchange of a negative charge, then backward in time, with a positive charge exchange, not to mention virtual particles popping up all over the place; it’s a chaotic place. At first glance, these two versions of time do not seem to fit together at all, however, if we keep in mind what we have covered so far, describing first the submicroscopic level, and then slowly zoom back out into the macroscopic scale, describing as we go, we can get a better understand as to what’s actually going on.

At the quantum level, fermionic strings are anchored into spacetime, and move freely through Calabi-Yau’s at the same time. These particles are following deterministic principles, but as we have seen in quantum tunneling and the double slit experiment, from time to time, these particles are diverted from a naturally evolving deterministic order, to satisfy free-will interference. Through the FPFP (this is the processing of temporarily known future states and values), they are sometimes relocated to positions which best suit the floating point future (FPF). This repositioning of state and changing of values presents itself as a particle flipping back in time, or opposite in charge, possibly even a teleportation from one position to another, as in the case of virtual particles; it is just the central node balancing the present to fit the future, nothing more.

“The backwards-moving electron when viewed with time moving forwards appears the same as an ordinary electron, except that it is attracted to normal electrons - we say it has a positive charge. For this reason it's called a positron. The positron is a sister particle to the electron, and is an example of an anti-particle. ..This phenomenon is general. Every particle in Nature has an amplitude to move backwards in time, and therefore has an anti-particle”
- Feynman, 1985 -

At the quantum level, we see this random, flurry of activity as the bubbling of space and time, and is commonly referred to as ‘quantum foam’ or ‘the spacetime foam’. It is indeed unpredictable, again, only because we are not in possession of all the information about the present and the future, however, the emergence of the smooth macroscopic time is really not difficult to understand and envisage at all. Let’s look at an analogy, let’s take a casino; if we were to observe an individual player winning and losing over a period of time, we would see a win here and a loss there, a seemingly random behavior in events. However, if we were to observe the player over a great length of time, and tally up the results, we would notice a trend appearing, to be more accurate; we would notice a tendency emerging out of the randomness. Since casino’s have the odds slightly stacked in their favor, we see that our player is progressively losing money, especially if the betting amount is fixed; this is basic game theory in action, whereby the chance of the casino winning slightly out-weigh the number of chances that our gambler can win. So the odds are literally stacked in the casino’s favor. This tendency in particle events is derived from the FPFP continually interfering, repositioning particles every now and then so as to guide the over destiny of the system. The FPFP is continually moving the goal posts to best-fit the play of the game, the universe is cheating, but it is cheating to balance-out freedom of choice against deterministic properties.

Now what do you think happens at our casino, if millions of players make hundreds of individual bets, of an average amount, and over a lengthy period of time? – I have deliberately misled you in this question, as I wish to point out something at the core of existence, the “period of time” (time) is actually irrelevant, and that only “individual bets” (event numbers) and “average amount” (associations, tendencies and quanta) mean anything within the universe; everything else is secondary, this is why spacetime is flexible, it is bending and warping to free-will - Well, mathematics allows us to calculate, very precisely in some cases, exactly what the casino stands to win over a given period of time. Additionally, the accuracy in the prediction increases if the numbers of individual bets are increased. So, from a casino’s standpoint, a million punters betting one dollar at a time, over one hundred bets, presents a much more stable prediction than a hundred punters betting a million dollars in just one bet. Incidentally, this is precisely how manufacturing companies determine production flaws/failures in the mass produced goods.

So, if we apply this mathematical process to trillions of trillions of particles, which are in turn involved in trillions of trillions of individual events, we see only the trend emerge; the zig-zagging forward and backward in time is dulled down and outside of normal human observation. This trend is the smooth progressive uniform change in matter from one set of states and values, to another, then another and so on. This is cause and effect, causality, this is time itself, and the arrow of time is merely the constant balancing of the free-will interference against particle behavior.

[Nesti (Mark)]

I know this is lengthy, and I sincerely apologise, but it's the last piece of the proverbial puzzle. It should bring it all together for you. The relevance to quantum computer is here.

BTW, if we could freeze time to a standstill, free-will would stop, and in principle, the future of the universe could evolve in a pure deterministic manner, number crunching. FPFP is the universe processing future information that was taken as a snap-shot of every frozen moment in time, but as time moves, then so too does the FPF (Floating Point Future). It is an endless balancing game.

History in the Making

“It has been argued that quantum mechanics is not locally causal and cannot be embedded in a locally causal theory…it might be that this apparent freedom is illusory. Perhaps experimental parameters and experimental results are both consequences, or partially so, of some common hidden mechanism”
- John Bell, 'Free Variables and Local Causality', 'Epistemological Letters', 15, 1977 -


So what does the Floating Point Future Processing actually provide? Special relativity dictates that ‘Local’ events are ones which do not exert influence outside of their future light cone. In particle interactions, the distance of a ‘local’ effect could be nothing greater than the wavelength of light itself. ‘Non-Local’ events like quantum measurement (in a classic sense), exert influence outside of the events’ future lightcone, but conflicts from a relativistic standpoint. If quantum mechanics is to be included within a TOE, and it must, then it would need to incorporate a local theory which describes an individual quantum event. Also, determinism requires that an outcomes’ physical state and value, by devolution, be brought back to a single state and value in agreement with the states and values at the time of the event, and through deterministic means; this of course does not yet include freedom of choice interactions. But what if a TOE included both a local and non-local mechanism for determining [probability based] quantum events, as well as a mechanism allowing for freedom of choice input, it’s a tall order, and one that has eluded science to date, but is this possible? Yes it is. That is exactly what we have within this theory thus far. We need only clarify the process itself and describe the FPFP in more detail.

For any given event, the local input for a particle event comprises the local component of a particle event, while at the same time, our central node, a higher dimensional entity, with connectivity to spacetime, at all points, comprises the non-local component. This model provides six key features in satisfying a true quantum TOE; 1. It provides local laws for any single localized event. 2. It provides non-local influence for all events. 3. It provides a well defined mechanism and criteria for the processing of the quantum wave function collapse, where the wave function provides a propagating boundary function, and limits FPFP to outcomes within that events’ lightcone, thus providing relative covariance. 4. Because string particles are processed outside of spacetime, while concurrently connected to spacetime, breaches in relativistic covariance are eliminated. 5. Assigning freedom of choice interference to any state can be regressed through devolution, back to its original spacetime states and values, suggesting that deterministic processes are present. 6. The model allows for freedom of choice interference to form part of the events’ deterministic processes.

In ‘Bohmian Mechanics’, the assumption of a hidden local variables containing definite values resolve many issues, however they are also known to be inherently non-local. Everett’s ‘relative state’ interpretation, otherwise known as ‘Many Worlds’ formulation, is yet another deterministic theory, but the hidden variable is negated in favor of an infinite number of universes assigned to a infinite number of possibilities. I site these interpretations simply to illustrate that at the highest level of quantum research; theories exist pointing to some hidden variable.

Many quantum theories and interpretations require something that is called, ‘final boundary’ conditions, in order to resolve quantum measurements. This doesn’t mean that we measure the universe at a time of its demise, rather it is a universe where all the events are frozen, so that a measurement may make sense; the final condition of the universe simply provides an aiming point for the measurement. Of course, the final boundary condition for any quantum interpretation can only be inputted into the mathematics once the measurements have been taken, this means that the event has already taken place, so there is no real future prediction happening in this case and thus freedom of choice is permanently safe. Our theory has a similar feature; our Floating Point Future provides a vital input parameter for FPFP, and the determining of all future event states and values. The true final boundary condition can only be known at the end of the universe, or at the end of a particular particle interaction for a local event, and for only the briefest moments. However, we do have a pseudo-final boundary condition with which to play, and this represents itself at every point in space and time, changing at every instant; as discussed earlier in FPFP and the pseudo states and values from Alpha to Omega. Just as the metric is a relationship between mass and gravitational expression, these ever-changing approximations of future states and values is a metric showing the relationship between deterministic properties and freedom of choice. You can think of this relationship as a series of line totals within a company’s running budget. Although it is perfectly accurate for that one particular line of the balance sheet, it will be inaccurate with respect to the next line, and grows increasingly inaccuracy as the running budget continues; it degrades over time and increasing numbers of events. However, it does offer a limited amount of information in the forecasting of future budgets, and in this way, the central node’s FPFP allows the reality of today, to reflect the likelihood of tomorrow. As we see in Einstein’s evolution equations, where they “encompasses the whole history of a universe – it is not just some snapshot of how things are, but a whole space-time: a statement encompassing the state of matter and geometry everywhere and at every moment in that particular universe. The system is in a given state at some given moment, the laws of physics allow you to extrapolate its past or future (This is why I talked about the origin of the observer in an earlier post). For Einstein's equations, there appear to be subtle differences compared with other fields, for example, they are self-interacting (that is, non-linear even in the absence of other fields, and they have no fixed background structure).”

The FPFP, in conjunction with the central node within the Calabi-Yau, provides a logical theory of how particle events and corresponding outcomes are derived within deterministic freedom of choice interplay. To this date, no quantum theory can be incorporated into a TOE simply because there is no known mechanism which explains how an event is decided. Although this theory cannot predict which outcome will occur, it can tell us how an event is derived and why it needs to be derived.

The last benefit, one which we have discussed before, is the ongoing process of keeping the particles uniform in their values and features, the stamping. Although this is done throughout the universe, which is a non-local feature, the reality is-is that it is performed by the one Calabi-Yau, and is therefore local according to special relativity. The key benefit here is that of control; it allows the universe to be internally regulated by just one self-consistent mechanism, a single system which does not need to communicate externally to itself, therefore there is no passage of information of influence within spacetime, and therefore it is consistent with special relativity.

Sorry for messing up the thread

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Rod66

Nesti has hit the nail on the head here. Consider a shuffled pack of cards. Until you pick up the first card, every single card in that pack has an equal chance of appearing. So in essence, superposition is the existence of each possible state and each state has an equal chance of being the outcome. Now we don't know what the outcome will be, until we measure it or in this case, turn the first card over. The question is, what interference has occured in the outcome, ie has the shuffler influenced the result? Theoretically, the collapse of the wave function occurs at this point so the bridge between normal physics and quantum physics can exist and hence a conscious being can view the outcome.
What we need is an observer that can be defined as having no possible disturbance to the experiment being performed. Anyone know any non-corporeal beings?
I'm waiting for a creationist to invade our thread..

Met one yesterday....nice entity

Bit on the naive side of things but a generally harmless individual

Very interesting thread..