Information theory revolutionized our lives. Billions of ones and zeros dance at our fingertips, animating the modern world of ubiquitous devices we now take for granted.
Quantum information is different. Quantum devices can blend ones and zeros locally to create coherence, or couple ones and zeros non-locally to create entanglement. These novel quantum states provide both opportunity and fragility——a tradeoff we’re still coming to fully understand.
Quantum computing will not replace classical computing, but it will be useful for doing some neat things——like simulating large biomolecules that are inherently quantum. More surprisingly, quantum mechanics can also enhance the performance of strictly classical tasks, like factoring large numbers. Or——as we’ve recently discovered——like producing classical stochastic processes with less memory than otherwise classically necessary.
