Rich wrote:
Multiply together all the complex numbers in V, and divide by the product of the complex numbers in Z. ... But the operation of choosing random elements on the unit circle suggests that it might be a good algorithm for quantum computing.
It'll be hard to compute the product of the phases on a quantum computer, since if you could do that (and have a decent probability of measuring the resulting phase in comparison to a known phase), you could solve NP-complete problems. Create an equal superposition of solutions in some subset of the problem domain and let all the phases be 1. Then negate the phase of the component that satisfies the circuit. By computing the product of the phases, you can know whether the solution exists or not in that subset of the domain. Binary search for the solution. -- Mike Stay staym@clear.net.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~msta039