caa a22 4500 445839015 CHVBK 20180317145338.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20110901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00016-011-0057-6 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00016-011-0057-6 Paraoanu G.S. Low Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University, P.O.Box 15100, 00076, Aalto, Finland aut Quantum Computing: Theoretical versus Practical Possibility [Elektronische Daten] [G.S. Paraoanu] An intense effort is being made today to build a quantum computer. Instead of presenting what has been achieved, I invoke analogies from the history of science in an attempt to glimpse what the future might hold. Quantum computing is possible in principle—there are no known laws of Nature that prevent it—yet scaling up the few qubits demonstrated so far has proven to be exceedingly difficult. While this could be regarded merely as a technological or practical impediment, I argue that this difficulty might be a symptom of new laws of physics waiting to be discovered. I distinguish between "strong” and "weak” emergentist positions. The former assumes that a critical value of a parameter exists (one that is most likely related to the complexity of the states involved) at which the quantum-mechanical description breaks down, in other words, that quantum mechanics will turn out to be an incomplete description of reality. The latter assumes that quantum mechanics will remain as a universally valid theory, but that the classical resources required to build a real quantum computer scale up with the number of qubits, which hints that a limiting principle is at work. Springer Basel AG, 2011 Quantum computing nationallicence quantum information nationallicence entanglement nationallicence strong emergence nationallicence weak emergence nationallicence philosophy of physics nationallicence history of physics nationallicence Physics in Perspective SP Birkhäuser Verlag Basel 13/3(2011-09-01), 359-372 1422-6944 13:3<359 2011 13 16 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0057-6 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0057-6 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Paraoanu G.S. Low Temperature Laboratory, Aalto University, P.O.Box 15100, 00076, Aalto, Finland aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Physics in Perspective SP Birkhäuser Verlag Basel 13/3(2011-09-01), 359-372 1422-6944 13:3<359 2011 13 16 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer