How much of one-way computation is just thermodynamics?

Abstract

In this paper we argue that one-way quantum computation can be seen as a form of phase transition with the available information about the solution of the computation being the order parameter. We draw a number of striking analogies between standard thermodynamical quantities such as energy, temperature, work, and corresponding computational quantities such as the amount of entanglement, time, potential capacity for computation, respectively. Aside from being intuitively pleasing, this picture allows us to make novel conjectures, such as an estimate of the necessary critical time to finish a computation and a proposal of suitable architectures for universal one-way computation in 1D.

10 pages, 4 figures. Argument made clearer in line with referee comments, this final version is 4 pages longer

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