1900

Planck proposed that light is emitted and absorbed in quanta of energy Hw, thereby explaining the spectrum of black body radiation.

1905

Einstein interpreted the photoelectric effect by postulating that light comes in particles — photons.

1906

Einstein proposes quantum theory of the specific heat of solids.

Rutherford scatters particles off gold foil, leading to the discovery of the atomic nucleus.

1913

The “old quantum theory”: Bohr model successfully describes spectrum of hydrogen atom.

1915

Einstein publishes the general theory of relativity, the culmination of classical (pre-quantum) physics.

1923

de Broglie proposes that matter particles of energy E and momentum p behave as waves of angular frequency E/¯h and wave vector p/¯h.

1924

Bose proposes statistical law for photons; Einstein extends this to matter particles (of integer spin, it will turn out).

1925

Beginnings of the “new quantum theory”: Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics describes relations between observable quantities.

Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit discover the spin of the electron.

Pauli proposes exclusion principle.

1926

Schroedinger proposes wave equation for the time-evolution of the wave function. Born interprets wave function as probability amplitude.

Dirac attempts to quantise the electromagnetic field. Fermi distribution for electrons derived.

1927

Bohr and Heisenberg develop the now orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg proposes uncertainty
principle
x
p  h/2

Davisson and Germer observe diffraction of electrons: particles can behave as waves.

1928

Dirac proposes a relativistic wave equation for the electron, which leads to the prediction of antimatter.

Bloch and Sommerfeld develop the theory of electron bands and Fermi surfaces in solids.

1929

“The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be solved.” (Dirac)

1932

Anderson discovers the positron, predicted by Dirac.

1935

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) propose thought experiment to show that quantum mechanics is incomplete.

1947

Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga develop quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum theory of the electromagnetic field. Predictions
for electrons will be consistent with experiment to parts in 1012.

1957

Everett proposes many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

1964

Bell inequalities between correlations are satisfied by local realistic theories but violated by quantum mechanics, answering PR’sobjections of 1935.

1973

Alexander Holevo publishes a paper showing that n qubits cannot carry more than n classical bits of information.

1976

Polish mathematical physicist Roman Ingarden, in one of the first attempts at creating a quantum information theory, shows that Shannon information theory cannot directly be generalized to the quantum case, but rather that it is possible to construct a quantum information theory which is a generalization of Shannon's theory.

1981

Richard Feynman gave the first proposal for using quantum phenomena to perform computations. The speech was entitled "Simulating Physics With Computers". It was in a talk he gave at the First Conference on the Physics of Computation at MIT. He pointed out that it would probably take a classical computer an extremely long time to simulate a simple experiment in quantum physics. If so, then simple quantum systems are essentially performing huge calculations all the time. It might even be possible to harness that for something useful.

1982

Aspect performs EPR experiment, showing that Bell’s inequalities are violated and hence refuting local realism.

Binnig and Rohrer image atoms with scanning tunneling microscope.

Feynman proposes the idea of a quantum computer.

1989

Penrose proposes that the brain is a quantum computer.

1985

David Deutsch, at the University of Oxford, described the first universal quantum computer. Just as a universal Turing machine can simulate any other Turing machine efficiently, so the universal quantum computer is able to simulate any other quantum computer with at most a polynomial slowdown. This raised the hope that a simple device might be able to perform many different quantum algorithms.

1993

Dan Simon, at Universite de Montreal, invented an oracle problem for which quantum computer would be exponentially faster than conventional computer. This algorithm introduced the main ideas which were then developed in Peter Shor's factoring algorithm.

1994

Peter Shor, at AT&T's Bell Labs in New Jersey, discovered a remarkable algorithm. It allowed a quantum computer to factor large integers quickly. It solved both the factoring problem and the discrete log problem. Shor's algorithm could theoretically break many of the cryptosystems in use today. Its invention sparked a tremendous interest in quantum computers, even outside the physics community.

Shor's algorithm for prime factorisation on a quantum computer can (in principle) perform calculations impossible on a classical computer.

1995

Shor proposed the first scheme for quantum error correction. This is an approach to making quantum computers that can compute with large numbers of qubits for long periods of time. Errors are always introduced by the environment, but quantum error correction might be able to overcome those errors. This could be a key technology for building large-scale quantum computers that work. These early proposals had a number of limitations. They could correct for some errors, but not errors that occur during the correction process itself. A number of improvements have been suggested, and active research on this continues. An alternative to quantum error correction has been found. Instead of actively correcting the errors induced by the interaction with the environment, special states that are immune to the errors can be used. This approach, known as decoherence free subspaces, assumes that there is some symmetry in the computer-environment interaction.

1996

Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, invented the quantum database search algorithm. The quadratic speedup isn't as dramatic as the speedup for factoring, discrete logs, or physics simulations. However, the algorithm can be applied to a much wider variety of problems. Any problem that had to be solved by random, brute-force search, could now have a quadratic speedup.

1997

David Cory, A.F. Fahmy and Timothy Havel, and at the same time Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac Chuang at MIT published the first papers on quantum computers based on bulk spin resonance, or thermal ensembles. The computer is actually a single, small molecule, which stores qubits in the spin of its protons and neutrons. Trillions of trillions of these can float in a cup of water. That cup is placed in a nuclear magnetic resonance machine, similar to the magnetic resonance imaging machines used in hospitals. This room-temperature (thermal) collection of molecules (ensemble) has massive amounts of redundancy, which allows it to maintain coherence for thousands of seconds, much better than many other proposed systems.

Grover develops an algorithm for fast database search.

Quantum cryptography successfully is demonstrated over a distance of 23 km.

First quantum teleportation of a photon.

1998

First working 2-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at University of California, Berkeley.

1999

First working 3-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center. First execution of Grover's algorithm.

2000

First working 5-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center. First execution of order finding (part of Shor's algorithm).

Quantum tunneling is observed in a macroscopic system (currents in superconducting devices).

Tau neutrino observed, completing verification of standard model of elementary particles (if initial hints of a Higgs boson are correct).

The idea of quantum now exists 100 years.

2001

First working 7-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center. First execution of Shor's algorithm. The number 15 was factored using 10^18 identical molecules, each containing 7 atoms.

2002

Dr. Isaac Chuang, research staff member at IBM's Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.), holds a quantum computer -- the glass tube contains special designed molecules.

Quantum computers promised to solve some of the most difficult mathematical problems exponentially faster than a conventional computer(4)

This is the first working quantum computer.

The multi billion question is: when will quantum computers be consumer ripe in the next future. Some think it will never be the case others predict the emergence within two decades.

2004

First financial transaction transmitted with the use of entangled photons.

2005

Construction

Operating systems

Programming quantumcomputers

Pioneers

Companies

Introduction | Chronology | Construction | Operatingsystems | Programming | Pioneers | Companies

Last Updated on October 19, 2005

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Footnotes & References