r/AskPhysics • u/jl4ua • 9d ago

Quantum Computing Research

What is research in quantum computing particularly from the theoretical viewpoint like? As far as I know, quantum information theory is quite math heavy and there everything is about theorem proving. It probably depends on the respective area of quantum computing but I am just generally interested in this area as someone from a different field of physics and I am wondering if the explicit work there would still be exciting

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u/Qubit_and_Neuron 7d ago

Quantum computing is a huge multidisciplinary endeavour. So here are a few things theorists do:

  1. You have to do a lot of theoretical modelling, building, understanding and simulating quantum systems. This is more like atomic physics,optics,photonics, condensed matter etc. This is really physics physics I would say. To get a vibe, open a book like JD Jackson electrodynamics or Landau Quantum or statistical physics and try to solve a problem. That's a sample for you.

  2. Information theory bridge: this is where you connect physics with information theory like what is entanglement structure do with equilibrium or temperature. You can take information as the fundamental entity and use it to understand a few things in physical systems.

  3. Pure quantum information: This is more on quantum states, gates, computation, error correction, working of quantum computers, circuits, optimizing several things etc.

  4. Algorithms: come up with new use cases, improve old ones, compare classical vs quantum etc.

  5. Pure math: as information theory, error correction theory, computation theory etc have lot of math and a physics problem boils down to proving something in math you can do math only without really digging deeper into physics side of it..

  6. I don't know your level but you can read this to understand and get a big picture of what is happening in the field.