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On the Quantum Simulation of the Factorization Problem

Abstract

Feynman's prescription for a quantum computer was to find a Hamitonian for a system that could serve as a computer. Here we concentrate in a system to solve the problem of decomposing a large number NN into its prime factors. The spectrum of this computer is exactly calculated obtaining the factors of NN from the arithmetic function that represents the energy of the computer. As a corollary, in the semi-classical large NN limit, we compute a new prime counting asymptote π(xN)\pi(x|N), where xx is a candidate to factorize NN, that has no counterpart in analytic number theory. This rises the conjecture that the quantum solution of factoring obtains prime numbers, thus reaching consistency with Euclid's unique factorization theorem: primes should be quantum numbers of a Feynman's factoring simulator.

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