Using Time Travel for Quantum Computing

[Guest_Jim_*]

The plan for quantum computers is to take advantage of exotic phenomena like entanglement and superposition to perform computations classical computers typically struggle to. Still some problems would be difficult for a quantum computer to solve, but about ten years ago an idea was suggested to make it possible. That idea was to send information back in time and now researchers at the Center of Quantum Technology (CQT) at the National University of Singapore, and other universities, have determined that this can be done without risking causality paradoxes.

The original idea was to send information back in time on closed timelike curves, with the time-traveling particles being entangled with a system in a laboratory. These would be complete loops in spacetime, so the particles would be able to interact with their past selves. This creates the risks of paradoxes, like the grandfather paradox where an entity destroys its predecessor, which means it should never have existed to destroy its predecessor. The solution the researchers have come up with is to use open timelike curves, which avoid the causality issues by preventing the particles from interacting with themselves. The computing benefits remain however, so we can solve otherwise unsolvable problems without risking paradoxes.

Of course we still lack any means of creating these timelike curves, even though General Relativity technically allows them to exist.

Source: Center for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore

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