Quantum information science is an area of study based on the idea that information science depends on quantum effects in physics. It includes theoretical issues in computational models as well as more experimental topics in quantum physics including what can and cannot be done with quantum information. The term quantum information theory is sometimes used, but it fails to encompass experimental research in the area.
Subfields include:
- Quantum computing, which deals on the one hand with the question how and whether one can build a quantum computer and on the other hand, algorithms that harness its power (see quantum algorithm)
- Quantum complexity theory
- Quantum cryptography and its generalization, quantum communication
- Quantum error correction
- Quantum communication complexity
- Quantum entanglement, as seen from an information-theoretic point of view
- Quantum dense coding
- Quantum teleportation is one well-known quantum information processing operation which reliably transfers an unknown quantum state from one point to another distant point, destroying the original state in the process.
Famous quotes containing the words quantum, information and/or science:
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—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)