My approximate understanding: Some problems reduce to calculating the trace of a matrix. The matrix might be really complicated, but sometimes you can approximate it by having particles braid around each other and measuring how likely the particles end up in a particular state. In theory it can be put into practice using materials called "topological insulators."
The Jones polynomial is a thing which can tell knots apart. The quantum computer can calculate the Jones polynomial by having particles trace out the knot. The Jones polynomial usually takes exponential time to calculate.
The "topological" in "topological quantum computing" refers to the braiding and the fact that they're computing topological invariants of a space.
"You won't understand it for a few years, you have not yet developed the cognitive capacity and you don't understand the basic concepts. Go watch a Star War"
These particles (anyons) live in two dimensions, so their world-lines trace out paths in three dimensions (two space dimensions and one time dimension.) These world-line paths get braided or knotted, just like hair does. And even though your hair gets jiggled around by the wind (quantum noise) those braids remain intact (the quantum information is preserved.)
The way I understand it, non-abelian anyons, which are the anyons that can be used to build a universal quantum computer have not been found yet. Correct?
Has someone found a particle for which some exchange yields something like a magic state? I've been told that known nonabelian anyons can only be exchanged up to Cliffords
So they touch on 4-dimensional theories only briefly, but one thing I'm very curious about is if higher dimensional theories provide a richer computational structure, in any of several senses.
Every 1-knot has a sort of 2-knot analog (actually, a whole family of them) made by "revolving" the knot, but there are 2-knots not generated in this manner. (The same holds true for higher dimensional knots.)
As we go higher, there are knot moves not even possible in lower dimensions (such as twists).
"Elementary particles are elementary excitations of the vacuum, which explains why they are identical." (pg 4 ref 3) Is this now accepted fact, everything is a wave and there are no particles?
This isn't really a question, all particles exhibit both wavelike and particle like behaviors. What matters is the scale (mass and energy) which determines which behavior will dominate.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 39.6 ms ] threadThe Jones polynomial is a thing which can tell knots apart. The quantum computer can calculate the Jones polynomial by having particles trace out the knot. The Jones polynomial usually takes exponential time to calculate.
The "topological" in "topological quantum computing" refers to the braiding and the fact that they're computing topological invariants of a space.
Edit. For the very bravest of five year olds, I wrote a paper on these things here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.05384
Every 1-knot has a sort of 2-knot analog (actually, a whole family of them) made by "revolving" the knot, but there are 2-knots not generated in this manner. (The same holds true for higher dimensional knots.)
As we go higher, there are knot moves not even possible in lower dimensions (such as twists).
Just a thought.