quantum chip built

[Travis H.]

I'm fairly ignorant of quantum computers, having had the opportunity
to see Schor lecture at a local university but unfortunately finding
myself quickly out of my depth (I still don't understand the weird
notation they use for representing [superpositions of?] "states" in
Bell inequalities and his lecture was full of diagrams that I didn't
grok at all).  So, I have a few questions:

1) Are there quantum encryption algorithms that we will use on quantum
computers to prevent quantum cryptanalysis?  Not just key
distribution; ID Quantique is commercially selling units for that
already.

2) Can't they superimpose more than two states on an particle, such
that the precision of the equipment is the limiting factor and not the
number of entangled particles?

3) Does anyone remember the paper on the statistical quantum method
that uses a large source of molecules as the computing device?  I
think it was jokingly suggested that a cup of coffee could be used as
the computing device.  What became of that?  All this delicate mucking
about with single atoms is beyond my means for the forseeable future. 
I still have hopes of progress on the classical system but if that
doesn't work out my second bet is on computation en masse.
--
"If I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist"
  -- Enrico Fermi (apropos, no?) -><- http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/
GPG fingerprint: 50A1 15C5 A9DE 23B9 ED98 C93E 38E9 204A 94C2 641B

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