• Question: Can the 'Quantum computer'(if invented) be used at LHC for faster calculations?

    Asked by rajathjackson to David, Chris on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: David Freeborn

      David Freeborn answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Yes! That’s what I’d really like to use it for! The LHC produces well over 15 million gigabytes of data every year, so it’s hard to imagine how much computing power it takes to analyse all of this data. And it takes even more to try to make predictions about what we should see.

      A Quantum computer would really neatly solve this problem: it could perform tens of billions of calculations simultaneously.

      I really, really want a quantum computer, but I don’t expect it to be invented for decades.

    • Photo: Chris Mansell

      Chris Mansell answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Yes. A guy called John Preskill used to do research at the LHC and then he moved onto quantum computers. Last year, he and some of his colleagues published a paper called, “Quantum algorithms for quantum field theories.” Quantum field theory is the type of quantum phyics that is investigated at the LHC. For the task of doing these calculations, the quantum computer would be “exponentially faster” than an ordinary computer.

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