Algorithmic cooling
A qubit (or quantum bit) is a unit of information that can be in a superposition of two states, denoted as formula_1 and formula_2. The general superposition can be written as formula_3where formula_4 and formula_5. If one measures the state of the qubit in the orthonormal basis composed of formula_1 and formula_2, one gets the result formula_1 with probability formula_9 and the result formula_2 with probability formula_11.
Quantum mechanics
Another goal is the development of quantum computers, which are expected to perform certain computational tasks exponentially faster than classical computers. Instead of using classical bits, quantum computers use qubits, which can be in superpositions of states. Quantum programmers are able to manipulate the superposition of qubits in order to solve problems that classical computing cannot do effectively, such as searching unsorted databases or integer factorization. IBM claims that the advent of quantum computing may progress the fields of medicine, logistics, financial services, artificial intelligence and cloud security.