1112.1347 (Michael E. Cuffaro)

Reflections on the Role of Entanglement in the Explanation of Quantum
Computational Speedup    [PDF]

Michael E. Cuffaro

I argue that entanglement is a necessary component in any explanation of
quantum speedup and I address some purported counter-examples that some claim
show that the contrary is true. In particular, I address Cleve et al.'s
solution to Deutsch's problem, Biham et al.'s mixed-state version of the
Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, and Knill & Laflamme's deterministic quantum
computation with one qubit (DQC1) model of quantum computation. I argue that
these examples do not demonstrate that entanglement is unnecessary for the
explanation of quantum speedup, but that they rather illuminate and clarify the
role that entanglement does play.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.1347