Temporal Asymmetry in Quantum Computing
Well worth the read from the source. Makes ya’ think. Because Quantum is Coming. Qubit
Thermal chaos returns quantum system to its unknown past
+ There’s a certain natural way the state of a quantum chip evolves if left to its own devices: from order to chaos. This is true about other things, too: With time, our bodies grow older, manmade structures deteriorate, and while an ice cube left on the dinner table invariably melts, another ice cube will certainly not pop into existence in a glass right out of the blue—although that might depend on what one has been drinking.
“One of our breakthroughs,” says one of the authors, Argonne’s Valerii Vinokur, “is the realization—that we put in practice—that a quantum computer is a piece of the real physical world but allowing for an unprecedented control over its evolution in time.”
+ Through everyday experience we acquire a sense of time based on the distinction between the generally more ordered past states and the typically more chaotic future states of closed systems—ones like a glass of water with an ice cube, where melting is a one-way process. Physicists refer to this as temporal asymmetry, or the arrow of time. It stems from the tendency toward disorder, formally expressed by the second law of thermodynamics.
+ To address this, the researchers came up with a universal algorithm, so now they have a beast of a genie to order around that is flexible enough to adapt to any scenario. No matter in which particular way a quantum system has deteriorated, he can do his magic trick and rewind it back to its ‘orderly’ past. Admittedly, he will ask for tons and tons of marble and scorch it with the fires of hell, but it’s never simple with genies. Perhaps this one’s an afreet.
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