Information Scrambling, Circuit Complexity, and Thermodynamics: From Black Holes to Cryptography

In this colloquium, I will present some recent ideas and results concerning quantum computing, information scrambling, and how we can use thermodynamic concepts to formulate complexity in classical and quantum computing. I will argue that classical and quantum circuits can scramble information as fast and as thorough as black hole, which is considered Nature’s ultimate scrambler. I will also show how the thermodynamics of mixing applied to reversible circuits can leads to an important application in cryptography.