A great alternative to qubits — PART 1

NOTE: This is an AI-generated image (if it wasn’t obvious already)

With qubits being the standard for quantum computation everywhere, people often don’t know that there are many other options available if you are willing to do a bit of digging.

One of those that I wish to discuss today is CV (Continuous-Variable) Quantum States. Specifically, we will see how they are different from DV (Discrete-Variable) Quantum States, how these states are represented, and what advantages they have compared to the regular qubits we know and love.

Let’s dive in! 🔎

Discrete-Variable Quantum States

Let’s start by explaining what everyone should already be familiar with — quantum states of the following form: |ψ⟩ = α |0⟩ + β |1⟩

Here, |ψ⟩ is our qubit, while α and β are complex number coefficients. Quantum information is represented simply by transforming these coefficients through various operations. It’s all about working with probabilities by manipulating them to get the results we want!

This approach is called DV Quantum Computation, the most common type of quantum computation.

However, just because it is the most common method does not mean it is the best method. If you think about it, the fact that engineers decided to limit photons, electrons, and other forms of matter to two levels…