Distributed quantum computing: A distributed Shor algorithm

Abstract

We present a distributed implementation of Shor's quantum factoring algorithm on a distributed quantum network model. This model provides a means for small capacity quantum computers to work together in such a way as to simulate a large capacity quantum computer. In this paper, entanglement is used as a resource for implementing non-local operations between two or more quantum computers. These non-local operations are used to implement a distributed factoring circuit with polynomially many gates. This distributed version of Shor's algorithm requires an additional overhead of O((log N)^2) communication complexity, where N denotes the integer to be factored.