Quantum Computation and Information - Introduction to the Special Theme.

Jiří Vala

Hoi‐Kwong Lo, Timothy P. Spiller, Sandu Popescu

Sandu Popescu, Noah Linden, Richard Jozsa

Jonas R. Becker Arenhart, Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo

We provide a brief introduction to the special issue dedicated to logical and metaphysical aspects of contemporary issues concerning identity and individuality in quantum mechanics. After a discussion of the main theme, we present the contributed papers and the historical motivations for the special issue.

Mikio Nakahara

A pedagogical introduction to counterdiabatic formalism of shortcuts to adiabaticity is given so that readers can access some of the more specialized articles in the rest of this theme issue without any barriers. A guide to references is given so that this article also serves as a mini-review. This article is part of the theme issue 'Shortcuts to adiabaticity: theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary perspectives'.

Megha Khandelwal, Subho Sankar Chatterjee

Quantum computing is a subject that assembles ideas from classical quantum physics, information theory, and computer science. This paper describes the connection between information theory and quantum mechanics. Explaining their relationship, the review concocts introduction to classical information theory and computer science, including Shannon's theorem, error correcting codes, Turing machines and computational complexity. The principles of quantum mechanics are then outlined, and the EPR experiment described. The EPR-Bell correlations and quantum entanglement in general, form the essential new ingredient which distinguishes quantum from classical information theory, and arguably, quantum from classical physics. Basic Quantum information ideas are described, including key distribution, teleportation, data compression, quantum error correction, the universal quantum computer and quantum algorithms. The common theme of all these ideas is the use of quantum entanglement as a computational resource. Experimental methods for small quantum processors are briefly sketched, concentrating on ion traps, high Q cavities, and NMR. The review concludes with an outline of the main features of quantum information physics, and avenues for future research.