John Watrous (University of Calgary):
Theory and Potential Applications of Quantum Information Processing
Several discoveries suggesting that quantum mechanics offers powerful
tools for performing various information processing tasks have been
made in recent years. Examples include quantum cryptography, which
allows unconditionally secure key exchange, and algorithms for quantum
computers that outperform all known classical algorithms for certain
problems. Unfortunately, physically implementing these schemes
promises to be a enormous technological challenge with nothing
even approaching a guarantee of success. In this talk I will discuss
some of the theoretical developments and (realistic) potential
applications of this field.