Quantum Computing progress - physnews update.388

[Oskar Pearson <oskar@is.co.za>]

Hi

I hope that this is relevant, apologies if it isn't. I am neither a physicist,
nor a crypto-oriented-mathematician... I am a part-time software developer and
Unix support person :)

As for the standard paranoia: trichloroethylene isn't in Ispell's dictionary.
The NSA have obviously infiltrated the Linux/Freeware developer community.
More proof that we are simply trailing behind the NSA in crypto technology.

First link from altavista search for +"quantum computing" +cryptography
Probably irrelevant :)
	http://hwilwww.rdec.redstone.army.mil/MICOM/wsd/ST/RES/QC/qc.html

>From a mailing list I am on:
0--------------------------------------------------------------------------0
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 14:03:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: physnews@aip.org (AIP listserver)
Message-Id: <199809031803.OAA01296@aip.org>
To: physnews-mailing@aip.org
Subject: update.388

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE                         
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 388 September 3, 1998  by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben
Stein

QUANTUM ERROR CORRECTION has been experimentally
demonstrated for the first time, greatly advancing the promise of
carrying out interesting calculations with quantum computers
(Updates 310 and 367).  Skeptics have maintained that quantum
computers would crash before carrying out a useful calculation since
the devices rely on fragile, easily corrupted quantum states. 
Proposed in 1995 and developed unceasingly since then, quantum
error correction has been all theory up until now.  Aiming radio-
frequency pulses at a liquid solution of alanine or trichloroethylene
molecules, researchers at Los Alamos and MIT (Raymond
Laflamme, 505-665-3394) spread a single bit of quantum
information onto three nuclear spins in each molecule.  Spreading
out the information made it harder to corrupt.  The bit of
information was a combination or "superposition" of the values 0
and 1, so that it represented a little amount of 0 and a little amount
of 1 at the same time.  Measuring the spins directly would destroy
this superposition and force the bit to become a 0 or a 1.  So, the
researchers instead "entangled" or interlinked the properties of the
three spins.  This allowed them to compare the spins to see if any
new differences arose between them without learning the bit of
information itself.  With this technique, they were able to detect and
fix errors in a bit's "phase coherence," the phase relationship
between the quantum waves corresponding to the 0 and 1
states.(D.G. Cory et al., Physical Review Letters, 7 Sept 1998.)

<remainder cut - about baseball bats :)>

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