Quantum Cellular Automata

Book excerpt: The Quantum Cellular Automaton (QCA) concept represents an attempt to break away from the traditional three-terminal device paradigm that has dominated digital computation. Since its early formulation in 1993 at Notre Dame University, the QCA idea has received significant attention and several physical implementations have been proposed. This book provides a comprehensive discussion of the simulation approaches and the experimental work that have been undertaken on the fabrication of devices capable of demonstrating the fundamentals of QCA action. Complementary views of future perspectives for QCA technology are presented, highlighting a process of realistic simulation and of targeted experiments that can be assumed as a model for the evaluation of future device proposals. Contents: The Concept of Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (C S Lent); Simulation with the Occupation-Number Hamiltonian (M Macucci & M Governale); Realistic Time-Independent Models of a QCA Cell (J Martorell et al.); Time-Independent Simulation of QCA Circuits (L Bonci et al.); Simulation of the Time-Dependent Behavior of QCA Circuits with the Occupation-Number Hamiltonian (I Yakimenko & K-F Berggren); Time-Dependent Analysis of QCA Circuits with the Monte Carlo Method (L Bonci et al.); Implementation of QCA Cells with SOI Technology (F E Prins et al.); Implementation of QCA Cells in GaAs Technology (Y Jin et al.); Non-Invasive Charge Detectors (G Iannaccone et al.); Metal Dot QCA (G L Snider et al.); Molecular QCA (C S Lent); Magnetic Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (MQCA) (A Imre et al.). Readership: Physicists, electronic engineers and academics.