7 Quantum Computing
7.1 What Is a Quantum Computer?
Quantum mechanics predicts that it should be possible to build a computer that can do certain calculations much faster than would be possible on a conventional (classical) computer. Aspects of quantum mechanics may seem nonintuitive, but all evidence supports it. In this chapter, we describe how a quantum computer differs from a classical computer and give intuitive descriptions of the quantum algorithms most relevant to cryptography.
There are entire books about quantum mechanics. Our goal isn’t to pack years of physics and math into a few pages but to give some insight into the concepts, terminology, and notation, as well as the algorithms that run on quantum computers. And for readers who ...
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