In conventional devices, information is stored and manipulated in binary form: The elementary components of these devices—the so-called bits—have two states, each of which encodes the binary 0 or 1. To move beyond the binary system, one can exploit the laws of quantum mechanics. A quantum-mechanical object with two energy levels at its disposal can occupy either of those two levels, but also an arbitrary combination ("superposition") of the two, much like an electron in a two-slit experiment can go through both slits at once. This results in infinitely many quantum states that a single quantum bit, or "qubit," can take; together with another strange property of quantum mechanics—entanglement—it allows for a much more powerful information platform than is possible with conventional components.
The Future of Quantum Information Processing
Jelena Stajic
Science 8 March 2013:
Vol. 339 no. 6124 p. 1163
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.339.6124.1163
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