20/27 December 2001

NMR quantum computing: Realizing Shor's algorithm

An experiment reported this week takes nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum computation to a new and very complex level, contributing towards the development of the tools that will make the next generation of such devices. Quantum computers were known by the early 1990s to be potentially faster than any classical computer, but it was not until 1994, when Peter Shor devised a polynomial time algorithm for factoring large numbers on a quantum computer, that such machines became a practical goal. In the latest advance, workers at IBM's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University have virtually hand-tailored a molecule to form the basis of a 7-qubit NMR computer that implements Shor's algorithm to factorize the number 15.

Experimental realization of Shor's quantum factoring algorithm using nuclear magnetic resonance
LIEVEN M. K. VANDERSYPEN, MATTHIAS STEFFEN, GREGORY BREYTA, COSTANTINO S. YANNONI, MARK H. SHERWOOD & ISAAC L. CHUANG
Nature 414, 883–887 (20/27 December 2001)
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