K.C.S.Pillai Memorial Lecture

Quantum Computation and Statistics

Yazhen Wang
Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Start Date and Time: Fri, 23 Mar 2012, 10:30 AM

End Date and Time: Fri, 23 Mar 2012, 11:30 AM

Venue: SC 239

Abstract:

Quantum computation and quantum information are of great current interest in computer science, mathematics, physical sciences and engineering. They will likely lead to a new wave of technological innovations in communication, computation and cryptography. As the theory of quantum physics is fundamentally stochastic, randomness and uncertainty are deeply rooted in quantum computation, quantum simulation and quantum information. Consequently quantum algorithms are random in nature, and quantum simulation utilizes Monte Carlo techniques extensively. Thus statistics can play an important role in quantum computation and quantum simulation, which in turn offer great potential to revolutionize computational statistics. This talk will give a brief review on quantum computation, quantum simulation and quantum information. We introduce the basic concepts of quantum computation and quantum simulation and present quantum algorithms that are known to be much faster than the available classic algorithms. We provide some analysis of quantum algorithms and quantum simulation.