IEEE Spectrum
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Abstract
The fast Fourier transform (FFT) is the unsung digital workhorse of modern life.It's a clever mathematical shortcut that makes possible the many signals in our device-connected world.Every minute of every video stream, for instance, entails computing some hundreds of FFTs.The FFT's importance to practically every data-processing application in the digital age explains why some researchers have begun exploring how quantum computing can run the FFT algorithm more efficiently still."The fast Fourier transform is an important algorithm that's had lots of applications in the classical world," says Ian Walmsley, physicist at Imperial College London."It also has many applications in the quantum domain.[So] it's important to figure out effective ways to be able to implement it."The first proposed killer app for quantum computers-finding a number's prime factors-was discovered by mathematician Peter Shor at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1994.Shor's algorithm scales up its factorization of numbers more efficiently and rapidly than any classical computer anyone could ever design.And at the heart of Shor's phenomenal quantum engine is a subroutine called-you guessed it-the quantum Fourier transform (QFT).Here is where the terminology gets a little out of hand.There is the QFT at the center of Shor's algorithm, and then there is the QFFT-the quantum fast Fourier transform.They represent different calculations that produce different results, although both are based on the same core mathematical concept, known as the discrete Fourier transform.