Quantum Cellular Automata
Gerhard Grössing
Autominstitut der Österreichischen Universitäten,
Schüttelstr. 115, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
Anton Zeilinger
Autominstitut der Österreichischen Universitäten,
Schüttelstr. 115, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
and
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Abstract
For cellular automaton machines getting increasingly smaller in size, a regime will be entered where quantum effects cannot be neglected. Ultimately, these quantum effects may very well be dominant. Quantum mechanically this fact is described by introducing probability amplitudes implying that one will not be able to know for certain whether the value at a given site is 0 or 1 at a given instant of time. We report results obtained by studying the evolution of one-dimensional cellular automata governed by quantum mechanical rules in such a way that superposition of probability amplitudes is permitted. We focus on strictly local interaction. The results are presented in the form of probability maps and clearly exhibit typical quantum features like constructive and destructive interference, beats and the like.
