Quantum Information: An Overview - Softcover

Jaeger, Gregg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144192258X ISBN 13: 9781441922588

Publisher: Springer, 2010

Synopsis

In one word, this is a responsible book; the rest is commentary. Around 1992 a few of us were led by Charles Bennett into a Garden of Eden of quantum information, communication, and computation. No sooner had we started exploring our surroundings and naming the birds and the beasts, than Peter Shor put an end to that apparent innocence by showing that factoring could be turned―by means of quantum hardware―into a po- nomial task. Fast factoring meant business; everybody seemed to be awfully interested in factoring. Not that anyone had any use for factoring per se, but it seemed that all the world’s secrets were protected by factor-keyed padlocks. Think of all the power and the glory (and something else) that you might get by acting as a consultant to big businesses and government agencies, helping them pick everyone else’s locks and at the same time build unpickable ones (well, nearly unpickable) for themselves. And if one can get an exponential advantage in factoring, wouldn’t an exponential advantage be lying around the corner for practically any other computational task? Quantum infor- tion “and all that” has indeed blossomed in a few years into a wonderful new chapter of physics, comparable in ?avor and scope to thermodynamics. It has alsoturnedintoaveritable“industry”―producingpapers,conferences,exp- iments, e?ects, devices―even proposals for quantum computer architectures.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Jaeger is Associate Professor at Boston University. He research focus has been in quantum mechanics, particularly quantum computing, quantum cryptography, quantum metrology and the foundations of quantum mechanics. He was worked in academia and industry in the United States and Europe as a research director, theorist and experimentalist. He participated in the building of the world's first practical metropolitan area quantum cryptographic network, the DARPA Quantum Network Test-bed, as a member of the Quantum Imaging Laboratory (and more recently the Quantum Communication and Measurement Laboratory) with Boston University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the BU Photonics Center, along with colleagues at Harvard University and BBN Technologies.

From the Back Cover

This book is a comprehensive yet concise overview of quantum information science, which is a rapidly developing area of interdisciplinary investigation that now plays a significant role in physics, information technology and engineering. It is a handy reference for practitioners and students covering quantum mechanics, quantum key distribution, quantum computation and quantum communication, as well as explicating foundational issues of these topics. Specific protocols for quantum coding, quantum teleportation, quantum key distribution, quantum data compression and entanglement purification are discussed, as are quantum algorithms, including the Deutsch-Jozsa, Shor and Grover algorithms. Appendices on the mathematics of quantum information science and postulates of quantum mechanics are included. The book contains more than 25 illustrations that encapsulate essential ideas and fundamental constructs of quantum information science. The bibliography contains more than 400 articles from the literature of quantum mechanics and information science. Foreword by Prof. Tommaso Toffoli.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 144192258X
• ISBN 13: 9781441922588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302