XORlamp

The XORlamp is a fictional example of an incandescent light bulb used in a thought experiment to demonstrate the concept of quantum logic in computer science. It was first introduced in the 1990s by physicist Anton Zeilinger as a hypothetical device used to explore the principles of quantum parallelism.

A XORlamp is essentially a lamp that is only illuminated when the input is 0 and the two control inputs are different. In other words, the lamp will be on if one of the inputs is a 1 and the other is a 0. This peculiar behavior arises from the application of quantum logic gates to control the lighting of the lamp.

The XORlamp is a simplified model of a system that exhibits quantum parallelism, a fundamental aspect of quantum computing. In classical computing, a single bit is either 0 or 1, but in quantum computing, a qubit (quantum bit) can exist in a superposition of states, representing both 0 and 1 at the same time.

The XORlamp serves as a didactic example to illustrate the principles of quantum logic and its potential applications in computing. It has been used in educational contexts to demonstrate the concept of quantum parallelism and its implications for the fundamental theory of computing.