One of the things we are interested in is
understanding
what are the capabilities of quantum
information processing what would we
be able to do when we build quantum
computers
and we'd like to understand whether we
can really build scaleable systems that
could solve hard problems
and I think that's already a compelling
research agenda
on its own but I'm not really an
engineer I'm
a theoretical physicist so I think the
things that I find most interesting
are the possible ways in which our ideas
about quantum computing and about quantum
information
can help us understand other problems in
physics
one example is understanding the
different phases are
types of quantum matter we know if we 
have a quantum system
of many particles the particles want to
be entangled with one another and
completely describing their correlation
this again
something that we couldn't possibly do
with our classical computer so their
possible
phases or states to quantum matter
which we can't very well anticipate or imagine
because they're so far beyond what we
normally think about and so I think
we're going to see new types of quantum
matter
in materials that physicists are
going to design and realize
and I'm also expecting there to be
implications
of quantum information ideas in
gravitational physics actually
I, before I started doing quantum
computing,
was interested in black holes and the
properties of black holes they are
very fascinating objects from a
theorist perspective and
really I first got interested in the
idea of quantum information processing
by thinking about how black holes will
process the quantum state
that collapses to form a black hole and
then that state gets all scrambled up and
get re-radiated because a black hole
eventually evaporates we are getting the
point now where we are
getting very different insights than we
had before about the behavior
of black holes from quantum gravity by
thinking about the problem
from the perspective of what we now know
about quantum computing so I think
that's going to be
and exciting area in the next couple
years
