English

Detrimental Decoherence

Quantum Physics 2008-06-17 v1

Abstract

We propose and discuss two conjectures on the nature of information leaks (decoherence) for quantum computers. These conjectures, if (or when) they hold, are damaging for quantum error-correction as required by fault-tolerant quantum computation. The first conjecture asserts that information leaks for a pair of substantially entangled qubits are themselves substantially positively correlated. The second conjecture asserts that in a noisy quantum computer with highly entangled qubits there will be a strong effect of error synchronization. We present more general conjectures for arbitrary noisy quantum systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.2443,
  title  = {Detrimental Decoherence},
  author = {Gil Kalai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.2443},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

A revision and an extension of the formal part of quant-ph/0607021. The paper contains new conjectures on general quantum systems and elaborate on the connection with quantum error-correction

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:50:43.337Z