MilestoneTheory & algorithmsConfirmed
David Deutsch describes a universal quantum computer
Jul 8, 1985
Oxford physicist David Deutsch publishes the theory of a "universal quantum computer", a quantum version of the Turing machine able to simulate any physical system that obeys quantum mechanics. He argues that "quantum parallelism" would let it do some tasks faster than a classical machine.
Why it matters
It turned Feynman's suggestion into a precise model of a programmable quantum computer. The Breakthrough Prize citation credits Deutsch with laying the foundations of quantum computation.
David Deutsch · Oxford
Related
Sources (3)
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Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A
Quantum theory, the Church–Turing principle and the universal quantum computer
“Computing machines resembling the universal quantum computer could, in principle, be built and would have many remarkable properties not reproducible by any Turing machine. These do not include the computation of non-recursive functions, but they do include ‘quantum parallelism’, a method by which certain probabilistic tasks can be performed faster by a universal quantum computer than by any classical restriction of it.”
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Breakthrough Prize Foundation
Winners of the 2023 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Mathematics and Fundamental Physics Announced
“David Deutsch laid the foundations of quantum computation. He defined the quantum version of a Turing machine – a universal quantum computer, and proved that it could simulate to arbitrary accuracy any physical system that obeys the laws of quantum mechanics.”
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arXiv (John Preskill)
Quantum computing 40 years later
“In 1985, David Deutsch formalized the notion of a quantum computer [4], an important advance, and raised the question whether quantum computers might have an advantage over classical computer at solving problems that have nothing to do with quantum physics.”
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