a seminar on Quantum Simulation

["K. Pawlikowski" <krys@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>]

 TITLE: Quantum Simulation SPEAKER: Dr Ron Addie

    Department of Mathematics and Computing

    University of Southern Queensland

Toowoomba, QLD 4350 VENUE: Room 031 Cosc / Math building - University
of Canterbury DATE: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 TIME: 10:00 to
10:50   followed by questions, coffee/tea &
good quality nibbles ABSTRACT:Quantum simulation is a brand new idea
for computer simulation of
rare events, although it is based on two existing approaches to
rare event simulation which already have a lot of promise, namely
importance sampling and importance splitting. In all three cases,
the idea is to simulate only the "interesting" part of the state
space of the investigated system.

Suppose you want to simulate the evolution of life from the primordial
soup (please ignore the possibility that it didn't happen this way at
all). In fact, you would like the simulation to be used to estimate
how long this could take. In all three approaches, the way this might
be achieved is to alter the simulation in a manner that the
"interesting" paths of evolution are emphasised, and the uninteresting
paths (eg a million years go by with no change) are not simulated. 
In quantum simulation, this is achieved by "cloning" the interesting
simulations, and killing off the uninteresting ones. In this seminar
I will try to spend some time explaining importance sampling andimportance splitting as well as quantum simulation.