Hamiltonian models of quantum computers which evolve quantum ballistically
Paul A. Benioff · University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) · 1996
Quantum computation is a subject of much recent interest. In much of the work in the literature quantum computers are described as built up from a sequence of unitary operators where each unitary operator carries out a stage of the overall quantum computation. The sequence and connection of the different unitary operators is provided presumably by some external agent which governs the overall process. However there is no description of a an overall Hamiltonian needed to give the actual quantum dynamics of the computation process. In this talk, earlier work by the author is followed in that simple, time independent Hamiltonians are used to describe quantum computation, and the Schroedinger evolution of the computation system is considered to be quantum ballistic. However, the definition of quantum ballistic evolution used here is more general than that used in the earlier work. In particular, the requirement that the step operator {ital T} associated with a process be a partial isometry, used in, is relaxed to require that {ital T} be a contraction operator. (An operator {ital T} is a partial isometry if the self-adjoint operators T{sup {dagger}}T and TT{sup {dagger}} are also projection operators.{ital T} is a contraction operator if {vert_bar}{vert_bar} {ital T} {vert_bar}{vert_bar} {<=} 1.) The main purpose of this talk is to investigate some consequences for quantum computation under this weaker requirement. It will be seen that system motion along discrete paths in a basis still occurs. However the motion occurs in ,the presence of potentials whose height and distribution along the path depends on {ital T} and the path states.