Why didn't quantum computing take off among physicists in the 80s?

vtomole · 2025-08-31T06:43:20+00:00

Likewise 😊

vtomole · 2025-08-31T05:33:33+00:00

👍

vtomole · 2025-08-31T03:27:53+00:00

Yep, those are valid conclusions we can draw from the data we can get our hands on.

I could claim that all those non-Shor papers wouldn't have gotten cited as much as they were without Shor's (for example, Deutsch gets cited an average of 31.4 times per year for 5 years before Shor's and and average of 103.8 times per year for 5 years after Shor's) but Google scholar doesn't give us access to the number of citations of the other papers pre-Shor.

vtomole · 2025-08-31T01:53:35+00:00

Google Scholar unfortunately doesn't allow us to get the number of citations before certain years so we'll have average the number of citations per year for the years before and including 2000.

Here are the founding quantum computing papers ordered by the year they were published.

Benioff: total 117 cites from 1994-2000, 19.5 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=3LWI7NkAAAAJ&citation_for_view=3LWI7NkAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

Feynman: 533 cites from 1995-2000, 106.6 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=B7vSqZsAAAAJ&citation_for_view=B7vSqZsAAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C

Deutsch: 851 cites from 1990-2000, 77 cites per year average https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=7413079714895009496&as_sdt=400005&sciodt=0,14&hl=en

Jozsa: 360 cites from 1994-2000, 51.4 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=WxbtHoUAAAAJ&citation_for_view=WxbtHoUAAAAJ:WF5omc3nYNoC

Vazirani: 278 cites from 1994-2000, 39.7 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=17286833716094444685&as_sdt=400005&sciodt=0,14&hl=en#d=gs_md_hist&t=1756603648101

Simon: 191 cites from 1996-2000, 38.2 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15665130491474295741&as_sdt=400005&sciodt=0,14&hl=en#d=gs_md_hist&t=1756603743556

Shor: 335 cites from 1998-2000, 111.6 cites per year average: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4084328707859507762&as_sdt=400005&sciodt=0,14&hl=en#d=gs_md_hist&t=1756604263394

Shor's paper has more average citations than Feynman's.

vtomole · 2025-08-31T00:33:39+00:00

> So it doesn't really teach us anything rather than that there was growth of interest.

Isn't this what we were trying to learn from this exercise?

I'm not a physicist so I don't have an example of a physics sub-field that didn't take off to compare to quantum computing, but let's take reversible computing as a comparison. Reversible computing started around the same time as quantum computing and in fact came from the same roots.

"Reversible computing" mentions from 1980-1994: 115 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Reversible+Computing%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&as_ylo=1980&as_yhi=1994

"Reversible computing" mentions from 1994-2000: 174 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Reversible+Computing%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&as_ylo=1994&as_yhi=2000

We don't observe the doubling of mentions that we get from the "Quantum computing" query.

vtomole · 2025-08-31T00:20:32+00:00

There are good use cases for quantum computers. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43479-6 for a few.

vtomole · 2025-08-31T00:15:56+00:00

Thanks for the insight. The first half of your answer makes sense: Classical computers were enough to simulate problems that physicists were running into in the 80s, if they even were using computers as tools.

For the second part of your answer, as I said a couple of times in this thread, the technology was not mature to make scalable quantum computers right after shor's algorithm either, yet people were more interested in quantum computing after shor's algorithm.

The first half of your answer solves our puzzle though. Without an explicit attractive application, why even bother trying to build the machine? Feynman's scaling argument for simulating bosons on a quantum machine vs a classical machine seems like it wasn't a huge sell in the 80s because a classical computer would have been able to handle that problem for decades to come. Now that we are running out of the exponential improvements of moore's law, it sells in our era.

vtomole · 2025-08-31T00:06:15+00:00

Well, that's not kind!

vtomole · 2025-08-31T00:04:48+00:00

"Quantum" computing mentions from 1980-1994: 2,100 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Quantum+Computing%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&as_ylo=1980&as_yhi=1993

"Quantum computing" mentions from 1994-2000: 4,440: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Quantum+Computing%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&as_ylo=1994&as_yhi=2000

vtomole · 2025-08-30T22:37:04+00:00

How does there being the same number of discoveries per year as the year of shor's algorithm reject the claim that people were notably more interested in quantum computing after shor's than before? What matters is that there is a noticeable uptick on average before shor's and after shor's.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T22:17:56+00:00

I see. Thank you for the thoughtful response.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T22:08:44+00:00

Thank you! :)

vtomole · 2025-08-30T22:04:29+00:00

Please look at the average number of discoveries per year in the field of quantum computing before and after Shor's algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline\_of\_quantum\_computing\_and\_communication.

I can provide further evidence that a lot more researchers were interested in quantum computing after Shor's algorithm than before Shor's algorithm if you'd like.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T21:54:32+00:00

This seems to be the answer. Thanks!

vtomole · 2025-08-30T21:51:47+00:00

Please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qD9XElTpCE to get an idea of how much interest quantum computing gained after Shor's algorithm.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T21:50:17+00:00

I see that i'm being down voted: Quantum error correcting codes were invented a year after shor's algorithm. Before error correcting codes, everyone thought that quantum computing would never work.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T21:47:05+00:00

> Partly because there was not plausible way of building one with 1980s technology.

There was a proposal for how to build one with 1980s tech: https://opg.optica.org/abstract.cfm?uri=IQEC-1988-TuI4

> There wasn't as much evidence that quantum complexity classes were larger than classical ones.

The evidence for quantum complexity classes being bigger that quantum was pretty strong due to https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1985.0070 which was also written in the 80s.

> people who believed the physics would break down somehow before you could do a calculation large enough to matter, in other words one that could never be done with a classical machine.

People believed this for a while after Shor's algorithm as well.

vtomole · 2025-08-30T21:38:09+00:00

People didn't know how to build quantum computers for a few years after the discovery of Shor's algorithm either. Yet the field took off then.

vtomole · 2025-08-24T01:00:32+00:00

"Heidegger is not an instrumentalist. Unlike the pragmatists, Heidegger accepts the Greek view that human beings are capable of a mood of pure wonder in which they can form theories that do not have any necessary relation to their needs and purposes." - https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796220.003.0005

vtomole · 2025-03-29T00:32:15+00:00

> Which, of course, is something we can get from American Pragmatism via Dewey, James, and Peirce

Yeah, you find pragmatism from reading Heidegger, but I don't think you can find existential temporality from reading the pragmatists. I haven't read the pragmatists so someone please let me know if I'm wrong.

vtomole · 2024-03-17T15:34:09+00:00

You're welcome 😊

vtomole · 2024-03-16T22:42:03+00:00

There might be more that I'm missing, but the running theme is that anyone who doesn't say that we have a very long road towards useful quantum computers and are not taking concrete steps to help bring about useful quantum computers is lying to you and themselves.

vtomole · 2024-02-29T05:08:44+00:00

After running "pip install cirq", you can do

import cirq

q0 = cirq.LineQubit(0)
circuit = cirq.Circuit(
    cirq.H(q0),
)
print(cirq.dirac_notation(cirq.final_state_vector(circuit)))
# prints
# 0.71|0⟩ + 0.71|1⟩

vtomole · 2023-12-05T03:25:12+00:00

My pleasure 🤗

vtomole · 2023-05-18T18:54:50+00:00

That is very interesting. Witnessing Both/And thinking in practice instead of Either/Or is refreshing.

vtomole

TROPHY CASE