Entanglement and Speed-up: Philosophical Issues in Quantum Computing

Workshop title:
Entanglement and Speed-up: Philosophical Issues in Quantum Computing


Date and Venue:
9th, May, 2014. University of Stuttgart, Room 17.11, Kepplerstr. 1st floor


Unofficial Schedule:
10:00 -11:00 Giovanni Cinà (ILLC, University of Amsterdam):
CONNECTING THE CATEGORICAL AND THE MODAL LOGIC APPROACHES TO QUANTUM MECHANICS

11:15 -12:15 Michael Esfeld (University of Lausanne ):
STRUCTURAL REALISM AND THE EXPLANATION OF QUANTUM NON-LOCALITY

13:45-14:45 Hans Briegel (University of Innsbruck):
TO BE ANNOUNCED

15:00-16:00: Michael Cuffaro (University of Munich):
THE PHYSICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BELL INEQUALITIES


Short abstracts of the talks are available for consultation at the following website:
http://quantumworkshopstuttgart.wordpress.com


Anyone interested in participating is very welcome, but kindly asked to register by sending an email to the following mailboxes:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Overview:
Since their rising, quantum computational methods have been a matter of interest for physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers. This is due to the fact that quantum computing is a result of the combined research efforts of multiple disciplines, and its applications can provide a lot of benefits in both the practical and the theoretical domain.

One of the most discussed topics is related to the origins of what is generally called “speed up”, i.e. the ability of a quantum computer to outperform its classical counterparts. In the last years, the description of the so-called cluster state quantum computer and some works on the dequantisation of quantum algorithms have at least undermined – if not defeated – the general idea that at the crudest level, quantum computation is just quantum parallelism. The aim of this workshop is to bring together physicists, mathematicians and philosophers and to consider the possible consequences of exalting the role of quantum entanglement at a computational and metaphysical level, highlighting in which sense the discussion about computational speed up can be fruitfully exploited for quantum theory and its interpretation.