Talk 13.05.2019

Speaker: Peter Young
University of California Santa Cruz, USA

Title: Can a quantum computer solve optimization problems more efficiently than a classical computer?

Abstract:
I will discuss ways in which the quantum world is different from
the classical world, and how these differences might be used to design quantum
computers which are more powerful than classical computers, at least for
certain problems. I shall focus on one approach to quantum computing, called
the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm, a type of quantum annealing, which is used to solve optimization problems,
which are of great importance in science, engineering and industry.
An optimization problem is one in which one has to minimize (or maximize) an
energy function in which there is competition between different terms.
I will discuss results both from computer modelling of the Quantum Adiabatic
Algorithm and real experiments on a device which has of order 1,000
superconducting quantum bits. A difficulty of getting a "quantum speedup"
from this device due to the great sensitivity of the ground state to changes
in parameters (chaos) will be discussed.