The purpose of this Network is to support a coordinated programme of collaborative activity in this area under the recent programme announced to foster UK research Networks. There has been a recent revolution in possibilities for processing information on the quantum level. Quantum cryptography for example is one part of this field where the UK has a substantial lead over the world through the efforts of researchers at Oxford , Strathclyde , DRA Malvern and BT Labs . In addition, theoretical results indicate that two-state systems can carry more than one bit of information if quantum entanglement is employed. The second key area of the Network involves quantum computation.
Preliminary results indicate that quantum computers are very powerful.
They can perform computations which are regarded as intractable on any classical computer. Again the UK has been very active in this area, with major research efforts under way at Oxford , Imperial , Plymouth, Hewlett-Packard Labs and elsewhere. From the fundamental point of view quantum computation allows us to understand better the connections between the laws of physics and processing of information. If practical, quantum computers will outperform classical devices in speed and storage capacity. Theoretical research shows that quantum computers can for example factor efficiently large integers.