Spins as qubits: Quantum information processing by nuclear magnetic resonance

Storing information in quantum mechanical degrees of freedom and processing it by unitary transformation promises a new class of computers that can efficiently solve problems for which no efficient classical algorithms are known. The most straightforward implementation of this type of information processing uses nuclear spins to store the information and nuclear magnetic resonance for processing it. We discuss the basics of quantum information processing by NMR, with an emphasis on two fields of research: the design and implementation of robust logical gate operations and the loss of quantum information, which is known as decoherence. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.