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Climbing Mount Scalable: Physical Resource Requirements for a Scalable Quantum Computer

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Abstract

The primary resource for quantum computation is Hilbert-space dimension. Whereas Hilbert space itself is an abstract construction, the number of dimensions available to a system is a physical quantity that requires physical resources. Avoiding a demand for an exponential amount of these resources places a fundamental constraint on the systems that are suitable for scalable quantum computation. To be scalable, the effective number of degrees of freedom in the computer must grow nearly linearly with the number of qubits in an equivalent qubit-based quantum computer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mail Stop B210, Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545

    Robin Blume-Kohout

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87131-1156

    Carlton M. Caves & Ivan H. Deutsch

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  1. Robin Blume-Kohout
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  2. Carlton M. Caves
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  3. Ivan H. Deutsch
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Blume-Kohout, R., Caves, C.M. & Deutsch, I.H. Climbing Mount Scalable: Physical Resource Requirements for a Scalable Quantum Computer. Foundations of Physics 32, 1641–1670 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021471621587

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