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Richard Feynman: On Quantum Physics and Computer Simulation

Richard Feynman discusses the possibilities and challenges of quantum computing. In 1959, he noted there was potential for computers to become much smaller due to no physical laws preventing it. By 1981, he was advocating for developing a quantum mechanical computer simulation as nature operates quantum mechanically. He later designed one of the first models of a quantum computer using spin waves traveling through a device to monitor computation. However, challenges remained in implementing the dynamics of quantum mechanics to generate computations.

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92 views

Richard Feynman: On Quantum Physics and Computer Simulation

Richard Feynman discusses the possibilities and challenges of quantum computing. In 1959, he noted there was potential for computers to become much smaller due to no physical laws preventing it. By 1981, he was advocating for developing a quantum mechanical computer simulation as nature operates quantum mechanically. He later designed one of the first models of a quantum computer using spin waves traveling through a device to monitor computation. However, challenges remained in implementing the dynamics of quantum mechanics to generate computations.

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viii Los Alamos Science Number 27 2002

Richard Feynman
On quantum physics and computer simulation
. . . there is plenty of room to make [computers] smaller. . . . nothing that I can see in
the physical laws . . . says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller
than they are now. In fact, there may be certain advantages.
1959
Might I say immediately . . . we always have had a great deal of difculty in under-
standing the world view that quantum mechanics represents. . . . I cannot dene the
real problem, therefore I suspect theres not a real problem, but Im not sure theres no
real problem.
I mentioned . . . the possibility . . . of things being affected not just
by the past, but also by the future, and therefore that our probabili-
ties are in some sense illusory. We only have the information
from the past and we try to predict the next step, but in reality it
depends upon the near future . . .Im trying to get . . . you people
who think about computer-simulation possibilities to . . . digest . . .
the real answers of quantum mechanics and see if you cant invent
a different point of view than the physicists . . .
. . . the discovery of computers and the thinking about computers
has turned out to be extremely useful in many branches of human
reasoning. For instance, we never really understood how lousy our
understanding of languages was, the theory of grammar and all that
stuff, until we tried to make a computer which would be able to
understand language . . . I . . . was hoping that the computer-type
thinking would give us some new ideas . . .
. . . trying to nd a computer simulation of physics seems to me to be an
excellent program to follow out. . . . the real use of it would be with quantum
mechanics. . . . Nature isnt classical . . . and if you want to make a simulation of
Nature, youd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly its a wonderful
problem, because it doesnt look so easy.
1981
Feynman, R. 1959. Theres Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Talk given at the annual meeting of the American
Physical Society at Caltech. (Excerpt reprinted with permission from Caltechs Engineering and Science.)
. 1981. Simulating Physics with Computers. Keynote address delivered at the MIT Physics of
Computation Conference. Published in Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21 (6/7), 1982. (Excerpts reprinted with
permission from the International Journal of Theoretical Physics.)
Number 27 2002 Los Alamos Science ix
. . . although I have done mostly physics, from time to time I pay attention to
computers. Two years ago Carver Mead . . . discussed with us [that] there ought to
be physical laws about the limits in computer design. . . . I got interested in the problem
[the amount of heat generated by an operating computer] and worked it all out. It turned
out that Charlie Bennett from IBM had worked it all out ve years earlier. . . . if you
have a reversible machine, the minimum energy requirement is essentially zero. . . . you
can have millions and millions of primitive elements doing the calculation, but if the
answer has only 40 bits then 40 kT is the minimum energy needed.
. . . An exciting discovery, made mostly by Fredkin, was that you can make a
computer solely out ot reversible primitive elements. . . . With one primitive element
[the Fredkin gate] we produce all the effects we need. In addition, the Fredkin gate is
reversible. . . . . [and therefore] reversible computation is possible. . . .
The next question was what are the limits in computers due to quantum mechanics? . . .
What I hoped to do was to design a computer in which I knew how every part worked
with everything specied down to the atomic level. In other words I wanted to write
down a Hamiltonian for a system that could make a calculation. Then I could calculate
the various effects of the limits due to quantum mechanics.
Now, we can, in principle make a computing device in which the numbers are repre-
sented by a row of atoms with each atom in either of the two states. Thats our input.
The Hamiltonian starts Hamiltonianizing the wave function. . . . The ones move
around, the zeros move around . . Finally, along a particular bunch of atoms, ones and
zeros . . . occur that represent the answer.
Nothing could be made smaller . . . Nothing could be more elegant. No losses, no
uncertainties, no averaging. But can we do it? . . . how can I make the dynamics of
quantum mechanics generate a long sequence of unitary matrices? . . . It has been sug-
gested [by Paul Benioff, we believe] that [each unitary] operation . . . can be
represented as the action of some Hamiltonian for a denite amount of time. . . .
Thats an awful lot of external machinery. . . Lets get all the atoms into the system. . .
[And so, inspired by the ballistic models of Fredkin and Toffoli, Feynman designed a
model of a quantum computer in which spin waves would travel through the device to
monitor the computational progress. It was the rst model after Paul Benioffs].
1983
Feynman, R. 1983. Tiny Computers Obeying Quantum Mechanical Laws. Talk delivered at Los Alamos
National Laboratory. Published in New Directions in Physics: The Los Alamos 40th Anniversary Volume.
1987. Edited by N. Metropolis, D. M. Kerr, and G.-C. Rota. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, Inc.
(Excerpts reprinted with permission from the publisher.)
On tiny computers obeying quantum mechanical laws

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