The stabilisation of quantum computations

Abstract

A quantum computer is a device capable of performing computational tasks that depend on characteristically quantum mechanical effects, in particular coherent quantum superposition. Such devices can efficiently perform classes of computation (e.g. factorisation) which are believed to be intractable on any classical computer. This makes it highly desirable to construct such devices. In this paper, we address the last remaining theoretical obstacle to such a construction, namely the problem of stability or error correction. This problem is more substantial in quantum computation than in classical computation because of the delicate nature of the interference phenomena on which quantum computation depends. We present a new, purely quantum mechanical method of error correction, which has no classical analogue, but can serve to stabilise coherent quantum computations. Like the classical methods, it utilises redundancy, but it does not depend on measuring intermediate results of the computation.<>