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Quantum sort

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A quantum sort is any sort algorithm that runs on a quantum computer. Such an algorithm could at best be linearly faster than any existing sort algorithm (if based on comparisons like classical algorithms), but no such algorithm has actually been implemented.

It is an in-joke among some computer scientists that, based on the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, quantum sorting consists of permuting the list randomly and uses the outcome in the universe where it is correctly sorted (how to determine this universe is not specified, nor are the mechanics of the other operations). Such a sort would be the quantum-mechanical implementation of bogosort, the archetypal perversely awful sorting algorithm.

See also

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