CANCELED Why We Should Be Skeptical of Quantum Computing*

Alan M. Kadin, Consultant, Princeton Junction, New Jersey 08550

Wegmans Hall 1400

Abstract:

It is widely believed that quantum computing is on the threshold of practicality, with performance that will soon surpass that of classical computing. On the contrary, it is argued that both the present and the future of quantum computing may be highly uncertain, for the following reasons:

• The promised performance depends on entanglement-based scaling to massive parallelism, which has not been verified, and may be tested [1].
• Even if the theory were correct, exponential sensitivity to noise for highly entangled states could make the technology impractical [2].
• For superconducting-based quantum computing, evidence for entanglement may be explained using the nonlinear properties of classical Josephson junctions [3].
• Evidence for entanglement in arrays of coupled qubits may be explained using conventional energy-band theory with delocalized states.

*  Poster presented at APS Meeting, March 2019. Available online at http://vixra.org/abs/1903.0501

[1]  A.M. Kadin and S.B. Kaplan, “Proposed experiments to test the foundations of quantum computing”, 2016, http://vixra.org/abs/1607.0105 .
[2] G. Kilai, “The Quantum Computer Puzzle ,” 2016, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.00992.pdf
[3] J. Blackburn, et al., “Survey of Classical and Quantum Interpretations of experiments on Josephson junctions at very low temperatures”, Phys. Rep. 611, 2016. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.05316.pdf

Bio:

Dr. Kadin is a long-time researcher in superconducting devices, and was a tenured faculty member in ECE at the University of Rochester, and then a Senior Scientist at Hypres, Inc. of Elmsford, NY.  He wrote the textbook, “Introduction to Superconducting Circuits”.  Recently, he has been a consultant with Hypres and other companies and an adjunct at the College of New Jersey.  He has also been an active participant in the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative.  He received his BS and PhD in physics from Princeton and Harvard, and was also a postdoc at Stony Brook and Minnesota, and a researcher at Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.  For further information, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-m-kadin-90882772/.

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