A Review of Perfect State Transfer and its Application as a Constructive Tool

Abstract

We review the subject of perfect state transfer; how one designs the (fixed) interactions of a chain of spins so that a quantum state, initially inserted on one end of the chain, is perfectly transferred to the opposite end in a fixed time. The perfect state transfer systems are then used as a constructive tool to design Hamiltonian implementations of other primitive protocols such as entanglement generation and signal amplification in measurements, before showing that, in fact, universal quantum computation can be implemented in this way.

18 pages, 6 figures. Although mainly a review, this does contain some minor new results. v2: minor improvements. v3: journal version (to appear in Int. J. Quant. Inform.)