QUANTUM STEADY COMPUTATION
Giuseppe Castagnoli · International Journal of Modern Physics B · 1991
Current conceptions of "quantum mechanical computers" inherit from conventional digital machines two apparently interacting features, machine imperfection and temporal development of the computational process. On account of machine imperfection, the process would become ideally reversible only in the limiting case of zero speed. Therefore the process is irreversible in practice and cannot be considered to be a fundamental quantum one. By giving up classical features and using a linear, reversible and non-sequential representation of the computational process — not realizable in classical machines — the process can be identified with the mathematical form of a quantum steady state. This form of steady quantum computation would seem to have an important bearing on the notion of cognition.