Ion trap quantum computers for chemistry

    I attended a seminar on November 14^th by Dr. Kenneth Brown from George Institute of Technology. His presentation was on Ion trap quantum computers for chemistry.

    Quantum computers promise algorithmically faster calculations of molecular properties by performing operations on the whole quantum mechanical state space. Quantum computers revolutionize scientific computing, but the construction of these devices remains a challenge. In his talk, he described his work towards building reliable quantum computers from trapped ions.

Requirements for Quantum computers:  

1.       Quantum bits or qubits

Carriers of quantum information

2.       One qubit gates

Manipulate single qubits

3.       Two qubit gates

Conditional operations

4.       Measurement

  Quantum computers are hard to build because systems that are easy for us to manipulate are typically fragile. To improve reliability, there needs to be better software/ firmware and better hardware because it composite pulse sequences and surfaces electrode ion traps. The basis of his experimental work is a collection of laser cooled ions trapped in a quadrupole ion trap. His work focuses on understanding the boundary between classical and quantum algorithms for calculating material properties.

In principle, this hardware problem can be solved by fault-tolerant quantum error-correction. Fault-tolerant quantum error-correction comes with additional requirements that affect the total computational resources necessary to calculate the molecular properties. 

Sources:

http://www.abrf.org/abrfnews/1996/september1996/sep96iontrap.html