On the Halting Problem for Quantum Turing Machines

Masanao Ozawa

Min Liang, Li Yang

Masanao Ozawa

Foundations of the theory of quantum Turing machines are investigated.The local transition functions are characterized for fully general quantum Tur- ing machines.Foundational problems on the preparation and the measurement of quantum Turing machines are discussed.The halt scheme, originally proposed by Deutsch, is formulated precisely and is shown to work without spoiling computation.

Michael Siomau

Quantum computing allows us to solve some problems much faster than existing classical algorithms. Yet, the quantum computer has been believed to be no more powerful than the most general computing model—the Turing machine. Undecidable problems, such as the halting problem, and unrecognizable inputs, such as the real numbers, are beyond the theoretical limit of the Turing machine. I suggest a model for a quantum computer, which is less general than the Turing machine, but may solve the halting problem for any task programmable on it. Moreover, inputs unrecognizable by the Turing machine can be recognized by the model, thus breaking the theoretical limit for a computational task. A quantum computer is not just a successful design of the Turing machine as it is widely perceived now, but is a different, less general but more powerful model for computing, the practical realization of which may need different strategies than those in use now.

Simon Perdrix

We study the observation of quantum Turing machines by allowing interactions between a quantum machine and its environment during the computation, whereas a quantum Turing machine --original model introduced by Deutsch-- remains isolated. We show that the introduction of observations leads to a weakening of the well formedness conditions of quantum Turing machines such that any (reversible or not) classical Turing machine is a special instance of a quantum machine. Moreover, observation of quantum Turing machines provides a formal solution to the halting process problem: the impossibility to know whether a given quantum Turing machine has actually reached its halting state. It also provides a more realistic abstract architecture of a quantum computer while most of the physical proposals of quantum computers are based on an hybrid classical-quantum architecture. However, we show that a natural formalisation of an observable quantum Turing machines leads to an over-powerful model solving undecidable problems. As a consequence, we introduce a restricted version of observable quantum Turing machines and we show that, under this restriction, any observable quantum Turing machine can be efficiently simulated by a quantum Turing machine. Finally, we discuss the potential application of the observable quantum Turing machine in the quest of a universal quantum Turing machine while recent papers have pointed out that a classical control is a key feature of a universal quantum machine.

Marco Carpentieri