Quantum Superposition
- [Interlaken, Switzerland - Swissmonamour]
Qubits can be in a superposition of both the basis states |0⟩ and |1⟩. When a qubit is measured, the qubit will collapse to one of its eigenstates and the measured value will reflect that state. For example, when a qubit is in a superposition state of equal weights, a measurement will make it collapse to one of its two basis states |0⟩ and |1> with an equal probability of 50%. |0> is the state that when measured, and therefore collapsed, will always give the result 0. Similarly, |1⟩ will always convert to 1.
Quantum superposition is fundamentally different from superposing classical waves. A quantum computer consisting of n qubits can exist in a superposition of 2n states: from |000... 0⟩ to |111...1⟩. In contrast, playing n musical sounds with all different frequencies, can only give a superposition of nfrequencies. Adding classical waves scales linear, where the superposition of quantum states is exponential.
<More to come ..>
