Verification of Quantum Mechanics

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• Elham Kashefi, University of Edinburgh
• Friday 06 May 2011, 16:00-17:00
• UG40 Computer Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Paul Levy.

Can we verify the theory of quantum mecahnics in the context of very large systems in a similar manner to the way that single particle systems have been verified to an exquisite level of accuracy? Can we efficiently test the validity of quantum mechanics using only classical devices? Can we prove a given device is in fact taking advantage of quantum mechanics rather than being a disguised classical machine?

I will describe how interactive proof system (a key concept in theoretical computer science) can be exploited to answer the above questions. Interactive proof system is an abstract machine where two parties, the verifier and the prover, interact by exchanging messages in order to ascertain whether a statement is correct. The prover (nature) is all-powerful and possesses unlimited computational resources, but cannot be trusted, while the verifier (us) has bounded computation power.

These results are based on the recently proposed Universal Blind Quantum Computing Protocol (Broadbent, Fitzsimons and Kashefi, FOCS 2009).

This talk is part of the Theoretical computer science seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Computer Science Departmental Series
• Computer Science Distinguished Seminars
• Theoretical computer science seminar
• UG40 Computer Science
• computer sience

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